


Miles to Go Before We Sleep

by PutItBriefly



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Romance, Season One AU where Belle is awake in Storybrooke, Will tag characters as they show up, and impeding doom
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2018-12-27 10:23:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 31,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12079158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PutItBriefly/pseuds/PutItBriefly
Summary: After rescuing Prince Phillip, Belle seeks out the one person she most wishes to share her adventures with.In Storybrooke, Mr. Gold has a fateful meeting with his accountant.Or, it turns out manipulating others to both cast and break curses happens to be a great shared activity for a couple.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The woods are lovely, dark and deep,  
> But I have promises to keep,  
> And miles to go before I sleep,  
> And miles to go before I sleep.
> 
> —Robert Frost, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."

“Rumplestiltskin.”

Belle loved lore well enough to know legends were hardly a source of verifiable information. Word of mouth was a suspect mode of transportation. The written page, _that_ stayed the same no matter how many hands held a book. When it came to histories and spell books, the conscientious reader knew to hold an author to certain standards of accountability. A story told and retold without any reference made to source materials or research beyond the memory of whoever happened to be speaking, _that_ story will change. In small ways, probably. No one possessed a perfect memory. But many small changes quickly collide and become big changes. The truth—had there ever been any—vanishes.

“Rumplestiltskin.”

Legend said the Dark One could be summoned by calling his name three times. Belle had never thought much of that one. Oh, it was rather poetic, she would allow it that. The Dark One did his deals with the desperate. What could be more desperate than a wretched whisper, calling his name to the wind and hoping for an answer? When Belle was desperate, she wrote a letter. Like her desperation, it had been a real, tangible thing that weighed in her hands and on her shoulders. She wrote what her people needed. (Salvation.) She wrote what her father was willing to offer in return. (Gold.) Even after Belle knew him and the incredible scope of his power, the idea that the Dark One would simply drop whatever he was doing and appear before anyone and everyone simply because they called his name the requisite number of times struck her as ridiculous.

“Rumplestiltskin.”

Legend said the Dark One was interested in the pleas of the desperate exclusively.

He did not appear.

But then, Belle was not desperate.

She might label herself _triumphant_. Or _hopeful_.

She had had a good couple of days, really. She freed a village from the scourge of the Yaoguai and in the process rescued a prince from a curse. She had made new friends. Encouraged dream-seekers to take risks. She knew she was putting good into the world not only through her own actions, but in the light those actions created, which would spread and create more. Because she accomplished something wonderful, Phillip had the opportunity to do so as well. With her quest behind her, Mulan could go on to do more great things. Dreamy was poised to break down barriers and do what every dwarf was told he could not.

Belle had always wanted to be a hero.

She told Rumplestiltskin that, once. He asked her why she sacrificed herself for her people when she had a life and he held the survival of her people ransom. She wanted to be a hero. She had been born a noblewoman, the course of her life neatly plotted out for her. Be a lady, fill her head with things like planning meals and embroidery until a nobleman with land or an attractive purse wished for her as his ornament.

It was not that she disliked that life and longed for freedom. What a bad deal that would have been, like exchanging pretty, filigree manacles for rusted iron ones! But her _dreams_ were of heroism, of bravery and compassion and bringing good into the world.

Rumplestiltskin had specifically asked her _‘What made you choose’_ as if there had been any choice. What was one life to the salvation of her people? She would gladly be a servant if it meant those she had been born to lead were safe.

He had used her confession as proof of treachery later, of course. _‘Is this you being the hero and killing the beast?’_

As if she would ever equate heroism with death. Not ogres or a Yaoguai or even a Dark One had cause to fear at her hands.

She had saved Phillip, and that triumph was sweet. That swell of pride that she _saved_ when others would have _killed_ would remain with her in the murky uncertain future where maybe victories become few and feel impossible. But the truth is her heart is not an unselfish one. There is another man she would like to pull free of a monster, though at this precise moment, she would settle for simply _talking_ to him.

It has been nearly a week since she left her— _his_ —home. When she was kind to herself, Belle looked back at that time and thought of the books she had read, the friends she had made and told herself she was happy. When she was honest with herself, she could admit she spent most of that week getting drunk with dwarves. Belle went on precisely one quest but she was so filled by every moment she lived that she felt she had a year’s worth of stories to tell and just one man she cared to tell them _to_.

But Rumplestiltskin was not summoned to her side by some legendary power linked to the sound of his name. And Belle was not surprised. She kept walking. It was after nightfall when she left Phillip at Mulan’s camp. She felt for tree roots with her toes and did not let a little inconsequential thing like darkness hold her back.

Rumplestiltskin, she supposed, had never made anything easier for another person in his life. He was hardly going to start now. Belle was prepared to fight him for his humanity, but she wished it didn’t have to be a fight. She wished he was the sort of man who would grab at happiness with both hands and refuse to let it go. But he was not. To be left all alone in an empty, filthy castle with no company but his possessions was easier—more familiar and less risky—so that was what he chose.

Belle was not surprised.

She was not even disappointed, not really.

Of the two of them, she was the brave one. Had he been brave, he would be a different person. One who did not feel the need to hide behind power or showmanship. One who would not choose loneliness because that was safer than letting someone in.

It was for the best, really.

This man she imagined—the one with too much confidence to care a whit about power or masks or safety—he would be lovely, Belle was sure, but he would not be the man she _loved_.

So, she said his name again.

Long and unique and musical. “ _Rumplestiltskin_.”

She said it again.

It felt good on her tongue. “ _Rumplestiltskin_.”

She said it again. Why not? Lore had a noticeable fixation on the number three. Were she to leave off after five times, it would feel incomplete. Six was better. Two sets of three. Later, when she was drunk and lonely, at least she would be able to remember that she had tried. Twice. _“Rumplestiltskin.”_

He said nothing.

Belle startled, and lost her footing.

He stood as still as he had that day in the dungeon, his hands clasped in front of him. It was almost too dark to see him. The only reason Belle even noticed he was there was the way the moonlight pooled in his large eyes. He was staring. His silk shirtsleeves almost gleamed in the moonlight, but didn’t.

Her lips and her tongue moved to say his name again, but strangely, nothing came out. She wished she had tempered her desire to talk to him, that she had stayed at camp with Phillip and Mulan until morning. Had she waited until daylight to summon him, Belle would be able to see him clearly. She would have noticed when he arrived.

He spoke first.

Rumplestiltskin was not a brave man, but he was not a quiet one, either. To stand still as a statue, wordlessly watching her...it cost him too much. He tilted his head, somewhat like a curious bird, and Belle knew he had done it only from the way the light moved, reflecting off his eyes. It was an achingly familiar gesture.

“What are you doing?”

“I”—What _was_ she doing?

When they met, he treated her like an object to be haggled over. He locked her in a dungeon. She offered him freedom from his curse and he had screamed and shaken her. He threw her in the dungeon again, and then he threw her away, still an object, but now a worthless one.

And she—she summoned him. She summoned a demon because she wished to tell him about her day? To talk to him at night before she slept as though nothing between them was broken or difficult or sounded dangerous once she attached the proper words to it.

“I want to make a deal.”

She didn’t. Now that she had his attention, Belle had no idea what to ask of him. The desperate played his game because they hoped magic would solve their problems. But Rumplestiltskin’s magic was not like the fairy magic that she used to transform Phillip. The Dark One’s magic was twisted and evil, burrowed into his soul so deeply he could not root it out. Belle wanted nothing his magic could offer.

She only wanted _him_.

Rumplestiltskin hummed. Belle knew how his deals went. He was supposed to feign delight, laugh and clap and issue warnings about the price of magic, which tradition dictated she ought to ignore. But he did not. He only hummed, like he did at home.

When she left their home, he was in love with her. And while she did not exactly expect that anyone should pine uselessly for her forever, it _had_ been less than a week. The wound of their separation was recent and raw. He ought to be in love with her still. Or nursing a broken heart. Perhaps both.

Had she hurt his feelings by suggesting a deal? Did he think she saw him as others did, as merely a means to an end?

“And what, pray tell”—he found his voice well enough to roll the r in _pray_ and raise his pitch on _tell_ —“have you in mind?”

Belle was accustomed to Rumplestiltskin having a gesture for every occasion. His fingers were just as eloquent as his mouth. Yet, all he managed to add to this question was the unclasping of his hands.  

She had absolutely nothing in mind.

“You…” Belle licked her lips. “You take me home with you,” she said, her heart louder in her ears than the words, “and I will tell you a story.”

He closed his eyes.

She could tell only because the pools of reflected moonlight disappeared. His shirt still almost shone, though, so Belle knew he had not run away.

And he said, “Deal.”

* * *

 The soft rap of knuckles against her open door was met with a perfunctory smile and “Can I help you?”

Jean twirled a pen in her fingers and hoped the answer was no. Or, perhaps directions to the office down the hall.

“I certainly hope you can, Miss O’Hara.”

Her smile threatened quite forcefully to flee, but Jean managed to keep it affixed to her aching face. Being the only accountant in a small fishing town on the coast of Maine had sounded so cheerful. The tight-knit community, the bracing climate, the small and manageable clientele. Jean loathed the work, went into accounting only because her father pushed her to do it. She had thought, when she arrived in Storybrooke, that quaint small town life in New England would make up for eight hours a day doing something she hated. Her only busy season would be tax time, anyway, right? Instead, she was all but chained to her desk, community life passing her by, her only comfort scattered daydreams of fleeing to Boston to study something she actually _wanted_ to do. Though her father was on the other side of the planet, she couldn’t find the courage to defy him no matter how much she tried.

By the end of the night, those daydreams would have solidified into a firm plan. When she woke up in the morning, she would sigh and remember it was impossible and return to the office. _Nothing_ made her long for freedom more than Mr. Gold. He was a wealthy man, Mr. Gold. He owned most of the land and buildings in town, including both Jean’s office and her apartment. He ran a pawnshop where, near as Jean could tell, no one ever actually pawned anything. It seemed more an outlet for him to indulge himself in a passion for collecting and restoring antiques. It was all large acquisitions and irregular sales. Worst of all, he was an attorney with a near-infallible ability to find the loophole in law or legal precedence to get what he wanted. He tended to assume she could work the same magic on the tax code. Had she liked her work, she would have loved him. The challenge he presented would have been greedily enjoyed mental stimulation.

But Jean hated her work.

And frankly, she had more than one fantasy about driving a pick-ax through Mr. Gold’s skull.

Mr. Gold lowered himself into the chair opposite her desk, both hands resting on the handle of his cane. His eyes wandered around the office, as though he had never been there before, as if he were not her largest and most frequent client. No one in town matched him in wealth or the complexity of their needs. Only the mayor even came close. His eyes seemed particularly attracted to the nameplate on her desk.

“Jean M. O’Hara. May I ask what the M. stands for?”

Careful professionalism kept her from raising her eyebrows. Only about three people in town knew his first name and he went around casually asking after middle initials? “Marie.”

“Have I ever told you what an interesting name you have, Miss O’Hara?”

“I can’t say that you have.”

It was bad enough he was here. Why did he have to waste her time on small talk?

“I am sure there is a story behind an Australian woman called O’Hara.”

“There is. It features immigration. What can I do for you, Mr. Gold?”

He rolled his shoulders.

Jean typically avoided Mr. Gold outside of appointments over his account, but she felt she had a decent enough understanding of his character. He was selfish and ruthless. Intimidating, despite his size and his limp. Even if she were the sort of person who crossed others—and she wasn’t—she wouldn’t want to cross him. He always knew what he wanted and if he waited to pursue it, it was because waiting suited his purposes better than haste and for no other reason.

His hesitancy to speak now? That was alarming. He must feel he had something gain by making his accountant wait. Jean did not want to discover what that was.

Mr. Gold’s fingers drummed on his cane. “Have you read any good books lately?”

Mr. Gold was not a man with an extensive social calendar. The most regular interaction he had with anyone was collecting their rent. Jean had never bothered to think much about his lack of friends, but if she had, she would have simply attributed it to him preferring things that way. He was unpleasant, but he was rich. He could buy friends if he wanted them.

He did not seem eager for anything but a chat. Perhaps he got some kind of perverse pleasure from bothering people, knowing they were too afraid of him to ask that he leave. “I am afraid I don’t have much time for leisure,” Jean said.

He had the audacity to _tsk_ at her. “What a shame. I read one, quite some time ago, that I remembered suddenly. It made me think of you. You would like it.”

Jean frowned. “Books—Oh! No. I am sure we never read the same, or not with the same feelings.”

He smiled. She was accustomed to thinking of his smiles as sardonic threats, but this one was real. “No, not with the same feelings,” he admitted, “but we do read the same.”

Well. Jean had quoted Elizabeth Bennet at him and he did not appear to have noticed, so she was hardly willing to credit that claim.

“It was called _Her Handsome Hero_ , have you heard of it?”

Jean tried mightily to contain her snort and failed. “Mr. Gold, I had no idea you were a fan of trashy romances.”

Thankfully, he did not appear offended. He just said, “It is not a romance at all, though I admit the title does lend one to thinking so. It is a book about compassion and forgiveness.”

Had they been friends, Jean would have assumed he had done something wrong and was seeking absolution before admitting his mistake. But they were not friends, and she hardly cared what he did as long as it was not increasing her rent when she came to him to renew her leases. “Mr. Gold, do you have a reason for this visit, or did you just decide to come chat with your accountant about books? I have never heard of _Her Handsome Hero_.”

Quite suddenly, it no longer mattered that she was sitting behind her desk in the same plush office chair she sat in every day. The world was spinning and her mind was churning and weight was crashing down on her while her heart soared and the man on the other side of the desk was watching her intently with brown eyes that she knew and didn’t know and knew again.

She wanted to cry.

“Rumple!”

Gold smiled. “Hey, sweetheart.”

Jean leapt from her chair, flew around the desk with such haste that later, she would not ever remember having done so, and threw her arms around him. Gold grabbed at her, his fingers digging into her shoulder and waist. It was familiar and achingly different at the same time. His claws were _gone_. He pressed his face against her neck, same as always, but he had no scales.

They did it.

The Land Without Magic.

_They did it!_

Jean’s palms were as fascinated as her mind at this new human-looking form of his. She ran her hands over his back, up his shoulders and down his arms. She pried his head from his snug nook against her shoulder, cupped his face in her hands and examined him. His face. His _real_ face. He was man again, just like he promised he would be.

Jean drew his face closer to hers.

“Ah.” Gold’s hands covered her shoulders and he pressed back. “None of that now.”

She released a disbelieving little laugh. “We’re in the Land Without Magic. You’re free!”

“ _We_ are free,” Gold corrected, “but we’re the only ones.”

“What do you mean?” She tried to withdraw, but Gold’s grip tightened.

“The rest of the town is still cursed. The Savior has arrived, but nothing else.”

Jean furrowed her brow. “What—what does that have to do with us?”

“Regina.”

She shook her head. “It always comes back to her with you, doesn’t it?”

“She did cast the curse.”

“Which we now need to _break_.”

“And that is the job of the Savior, not you or me.”

“We were going to be a family here,” Jean protested. “Why does that hinge on the Savior? Isn’t it...you know... _personal_?”

“Because while I doubt Regina has realized that Miss Swan is here to break the curse, she _will_ notice her control is slipping away. As soon as she suspects it is possible for someone to remember their true self, she is going to realize the most likely candidates are us.”

Jean shook her head. Unbelievable. “So Mr. Gold and Jean O’Hara’s relationship can’t change.”

“Not until the curse is broken.”

“Why did you even bother waking me up if it wasn’t going to change anything?”

“Sweetheart.” His tone was so mournful that it stung. Probably exactly what he wanted. “I needed you.”

“For what?”

His brow crinkled. “Not for anything. To be you, to be _Belle_. This curse traps people in lives that make them miserable. I couldn’t just leave you as Jean O’Hara.”

Who _was_ Jean O’Hara?

A woman stuck in a situation she hated, who let herself be pushed around by her father—“Moe French is my father,” Jean said suddenly. Would it always be like this? The truth hitting like a truck?

“Yes,” Gold said, unperturbed by the change of subject, “but he doesn’t know that.”

“All this time...I’ve had these memories of a pushy father who doesn’t _exist_. Why...why would the curse even _do_ that? I have a real and true pushy father right here in town!”

“It’s a curse. It’s meant to hurt. It separates you from the people you love. When it is broken, _everyone’s_ family will be set to rights.”

Wryly, Jean added, “Especially yours.”

Gold did not so much as flinch. “That is why we did this.”

Jean licked her lips. “How long will it take?”

“There’s no telling. I can’t see the future here.”

“How long has it _been_?”

“Twenty-eight years.”

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

Belle stumbled.

Her footing in the forest had been firm, but that was when she had been picking her way over tree roots and uneven terrain. When Rumplestiltskin pronounced their deal struck, she simply wasn’t _there_ anymore.

She was in the Great Hall of the Dark Castle, surrounded by a familiar collection of magical trophies illuminated by softly glowing candlelight.

Her feet had not been positioned for a level floor or plush carpeting. He had given her no warning that he intended to transport them. Rumplestiltskin’s magic was like that; all dramatics and flash or so sudden it was over before you knew it had begun. There was no inbetween. Belle overbalanced, then righted herself. Rumplestiltskin’s arm hung in the air, as though he had reached out to steady her and upon seeing there was no need did not know what to do with himself.

Within her, something snapped.

Belle threw her arms around him, pressing the entire length of her body against his. She held him for a heartbeat, then another, and finally, his own arms curled around her. Rumplestiltskin did not hug by half-measures. He held her fast, his claws biting into her shoulder and hip. They were not so sharp as to cut through her tunic, but there was a hard, thin pressure to them. The desperate grasp of them made her feel nearly as wanted as the way he pressed his face into her hair.

Rumplestiltskin had missed her.

Perhaps, he had even missed her with the same heartbroken yearning she had missed him.

It was a long, long time before he raised his head, but when he did, Belle leaned toward him, her lips parted.

Rumplestiltskin dropped her and jerked back.

“What?”

Holding his palms outstretched before him like shields, he said, “None of that now!”

“I—I don’t understand.” Belle’s brow furrowed. “You came for me. You chose _me_.”

“Well,” he protested, too casual, too cavalier, “you were rather insistent.”

She frowned. “So you only came because I summoned you.” Then why had he held her so tightly? “I thought that was just part of the legend—saying your name three times. I didn’t think it was true.”

He crinkled his nose. “Let’s just say I know when I’m wanted.”

She wished to cover her face, hide her embarrassment and disappointment. So, she tugged on the hem of her tunic with the pretense of straightening it. She would give him anger and defiance and disinterest, but her heartbreak was not for him. She would not give in to the temptation to hide. “I should go. This was a mistake. I didn’t even think you would _come_.”

“Well, I did.”

Belle heard the echoing slam of the doors closing with unnatural force. Rumplestiltskin had brought her here via magic; the doors should not have even been open to begin with. Was he making a point, or having a magically-assisted temper tantrum now that she wanted to leave?

“We made a deal,” he added tersely. “I upheld my end and I expect you to uphold yours. I am owed a _story_.” He glanced at her. Her expression must be stony because he looked away. “And, should you decide you are no longer in such a hurry to depart after it is told, I may be able to find accommodations for a guest.”

Belle pursed her lips. Rumplestiltskin didn’t break deals and he was not about to allow anyone else to do so. That his magic would not permit her to leave until she told him a story was clear enough. The assertion she did not have to rush out the door once she was finished was as close to an invitation to stay as she was likely to get.

She wanted more. She wanted to be chosen, she wanted him to ask her to stay. She wanted him to welcome her kiss instead of flinch from it.

He had been alone a long time. Probably, she reflected, longer than she had been alive. In all her reading about the Dark One, Belle had never been able to determine a precise age for any of them. Rumplestiltskin had been the Dark One for centuries, just one name on a list stretching back a millennia. Though the history books did not care enough about the lives of Dark Ones to get specific about their origins, Belle could not credit the idea that she was the first in centuries to realize that they were _people_ instead of some breed of evil creature all their own.

It would be unfair to expect him to break habits older than her in a moment. He was a lonely man who had forgotten how to be anything else. He was offering less than what she wanted, but he _was_ offering something. It was a start. Not as much as she hoped for, but more than she expected when she started calling his name in the woods.

No one had promised her True Love would be easy.   

Belle moved to sit on the table like she used to. Rumplestiltskin watched her get settled, then warily approached and leaned next to her.

She wasn’t sure where to begin her story. The first thing she said was, “I defeated a Yaoguai.”

No flicker of admiration or pride crossed his face. “That’s the story?”

“Aren’t you curious to know more?”

“Hm.” With a dramatic uptick of his voice, he cried, “Let me guess—you marched into his lair, divined his secrets through some innate resourcefulness of your own and restored his human form.”

Belle gaped.

He bumped her shoulder, his flair gone as quickly as it came. “I _am_ familiar with Maleficent's work. All told, it seems like a normal day for you, my dear. Not sure why you are so eager to tell it.”

“Let me tell the whole thing:”

Belle began with Dreamy’s gift of fairy dust (which made him protest that she should not have taken it, for all injustice in the world stemmed from fairies), how what he called ‘innate resourcefulness’ in this case turned out to be the ability to read multiple languages (which reminded him, he had a few scrolls that needed translating, if she didn’t mind…) and how the Yaoguai turned out to be Prince Phillip (which he apparently already knew).

When she was finished, he asked, eyebrows comically popped, “You weren’t planning on throwing fairy dust on me, were you?”  

Belle laughed. “You, I was hoping to _kiss_.”

Rumplestiltskin licked his lips and hopped off the table. He spun to face her and flicked her nose with the pad of his finger. “True Love is the most powerful magic there is. Don’t go playing around with it. It’s dreadfully dangerous stuff.”

She caught his hand and held it between both of hers. “Is it? Then you should like it.”

“Oh, I do. I’m a big fan of True Love.”

“Then why won’t you let me kiss you?”

He tugged his hand out of her grasp. “My power. I need it.”

Belle set her jaw. “No. You _don’t_ . What you _need_ is to have faith you can be happy if you let it go.”

Rumplestiltskin shuffled. “What I said before, about caring more about my power than you”—

_“That was a lie!”_

He clasped his hands, wrung his fingers. “I know that’s what you want to think, but”—

In a sweeping motion, Belle stood. “I am not going to do this again.” Now that she had told a story, the doors should open for her. Dawn was a long way off, but the village was not far and the walk wouldn’t be dangerous. Most of the path was within the gates of the Dark Castle itself. Once she had a room at the inn, she could get some sleep and decide what her next move was now that it had become abundantly clear _again_ that her True Love was determined to ensure he remained a hopeless endeavor.

“It’s for my son.”

Belle froze.

“I lost him, but I will _find_ him. Belle, I can’t do that without my power.”

“What—what are you talking about?” Had _lost_ not simply been a kinder word for _dead_?

“My son. Baelfire is his name. All of this,” Rumplestiltskin spread out his arms, gesturing to the collection that adorned the Great Hall, “has been for him. To find him.”

In her astonishment, Belle’s feet walked themselves to his side. “Where, what happened to him?”

Rumplestiltskin flexed his clawed, scaled hands. “My boy did not like what his father had become.”

Belle was silent.

“So, we made a deal: if Bae could find a way to break my curse that did not harm either of us, I would allow it.”

Belle resumed her place on the table. “True Love’s Kiss can break any curse. Parents and children—?”

“We were—I was a novice, then. Whatever magical solutions my curse provided, I was happy to use, but I had no knowledge of magic beyond what it provided. We didn’t know about the power of True Love.

“Somehow, Bae got it in his head that the Blue Fairy would help him.” He made a derisive noise in the back of his throat. “All she did was convince him we needed to leave this realm.”

Belle tilted her head. “What happened?”

Rumplestiltskin closed his eyes. Raggedly, he said, “What happened is I am a coward. He opened a portal to a realm without magic and I was afraid. My boy fell through that portal, alone. The Dark One can do many, many things, but realm jumping is beyond my abilities. I must follow him. I must! If you—if I let you take my power, I will never see my Baelfire again.”

Belle’s mind raced. She knew magic beans were unheard of now; they had been extinct since the Giant War. Mermaids could travel freely between realms, but their prejudice against humans was well-known. Even the Dark One was unlikely to be able to make a deal with one of them. Then again, the Dark One was unlikely to be a devoted parent or a hesitant lover and he was both of those things. Perhaps mermaids were not as unreasonable as the accounts of sailors would have her believe.

Belle forced herself not to get carried away. She had just heard of this problem. Rumplestiltskin had been trying to overcome it for untold decades.

“Do you know of a way to get there?”

“I know of a curse.”

Belle frowned. “I don’t think another curse is the answer.”

“It is. The Blue Fairy herself did not deny it. The visions of a seer confirmed it.”

“But you’re still here, with magic.”

“I can’t cast the curse. I had it in my possession for some time. Your friend Maleficent has it now, if I’m not mistaken, but she shall not be the one to cast it either.”

Her head shaking, Belle asked, “So, what, you’re just waiting for someone to take it from her?” That couldn’t be right. Rumplestiltskin had said all of his dealing and collecting was for his son. Waiting did not require power or contacts, just patience.

He seemed affronted. “I’m not going to leave my most precious curse up to chance! No, no, someone will take it from her when the time is right.”

“And when will that be?”

“This curse is a prison. When it is cast, everyone in its path shall be trapped in time. No aging, no death, nothing. Although I shall be in the Land Without Magic, I won’t be able to find Bae as long as the curse persists. Before it is cast, I must ensure the person destined to break it has been set on their path. That, I have yet to do, but I believe the time is drawing nearer.”

That made a bit more sense. His deals and manipulations were to put the curse caster and the curse breaker on their paths. Belle chewed her lip. “And then you will be an ordinary man, and with your son?”

“Indeed.” Rumplestiltskin sighed. “ _If_ Bae can forgive me. I know things don’t always work out the way we want them to.”

Belle slipped her hands around one of his. “This will. I have a good feeling about it.”

Rumplestiltskin chuckled. A real one, warm and inviting. “Optimism already?”

“ _Faith_.”

* * *

Jean didn’t like guns.

It hadn’t been much of a revelation that Gold kept a ( _loaded!_ ) gun in his house and another in his shop. Mr. Gold’s particular presentation of power had always included the threat of violence along with his tailored suits and controlled, intense voice. Still, Jean doubted he had ever actually shot anyone. Time stood still in Storybrooke. Everyone was a prisoner and nothing changed. No one died. In Jean’s mind, there was a distinction between the threat of force and the use of force, but perhaps this was not a time when it should be applied. Though not entirely unwilling to stay his hand, the Dark One’s penchant for violence was hardly theoretical.

Jean was not precisely a pacifist. The list of occasions she considered force justified was short, the list for _deadly_ force blank. She was not about to consider shooting anyone, so to take one of his guns for protection seemed pointless.

In the Enchanted Forest, this would have been a blazing argument. Rumple would have insisted Belle protect herself. Belle would have explained that preventing violence was a better avenue to keep herself safe. Villains, Rumple would say, could not be reasoned with, and she would point out that she reasoned with _him_ all the time. (But then, he was not the villain in her story, he was the love interest and that meant the rules were different.)

In Storybrooke, Jean’s office building was shared by three other professionals and the walls were thin. Miss O’Hara and Mr. Gold did not care enough about one another to argue passionately on any subject. He came to discuss his bookkeeping and tax forms. By necessity, the conversation was quieter and that led to a general diffusion of passion as they presented their points.

Which was generally:

Gold insisted she take the gun.

Sitting politely behind her desk, twirling a pen, Jean refused.

Sitting stiff on the other side, his cane held before him, Gold pressed.

Jean refused.

Gold pressed.

Jean refused.

Gold suggested an alternative.

Jean raised her eyebrows.

“I want you to have the gun,” he said for what felt like the hundredth time, “for your own protection. If Regina corners you, you can’t summon me to come save you.”

With her free hand, Jean held up her cell phone. “Almost as good.”

“But not as immediate.”

Drat, he was right.

“I still don’t need a gun. I’m not going to _shoot_ anyone.”

“Yes.” He sounded vexed that she remained steadfastly opposed to murder. “I gathered. Which is why I am proposing an alternate solution in the form of Emma Swan.”

Jean furrowed her brow. “The Savior? She’s here to break the curse, not be my bodyguard.”

“Miss Swan is the only person in this town, present company excluded, not under Regina’s thrall. As long as you are in Miss Swan’s company, any attempt Regina makes on your person will prompt retaliation.”

Emma Swan had already made waves in town, but they did not know very much about her character. The part of Jean that railed against needing to be protected from Gold’s paranoia wanted to protest that they knew nothing about Emma or if she would retaliate. She had been burdened with the responsibility of breaking the curse—something she was in no hurry to do, by the looks of it—but that did not mean she was looking to pick fights with Regina.

But then Jean would remember the apple tree.

Emma Swan had no compunctions about getting into scuffles with the mayor.

“Okay. How?”

Gold raised his eyebrows. “Your apartment has two bedrooms.”

“And how would you suggest I go about asking a total stranger to move in with me?” Had the situation not been so dire, she could have turned this into a flirtation. After all, Rumple had essentially done precisely that when they met.

“One perk of the curse,” Gold answered, oblivious to Jean’s train of thought, “is that no one is aware they have been doing everything precisely the same every day for twenty-eight years. The people at the newspaper think they run different vacancy advertisements. No one will find it strange if you place one seeking a roommate.”

“That’s no guarantee Emma will answer my ad.”

“She will if she’s looking for a place to stay and there are no other ads.”

“Tricky, Mr. Landlord. But we don’t know that she’s looking for a place.”

“She’s Henry’s birth mother. Regina won’t allow her to stay at Granny’s indefinitely. She wants her gone.”

Idly, Jean sighed, “I wonder what mayors are like in towns that aren’t controlled by an evil queen.”

Gold reached across the desk to take her hand. “We’ll find out.”

She smiled. Someday, they would have the freedom to hold hands whenever they wanted. To kiss and make love and search for Bae and explore this strange world without magic. But first, Jean had a phone call to make.

True to Gold’s word, when Jean called the newspaper office, no one found it strange that she wished to buy space in the classifieds to advertise for a roommate. The fellow on the phone reminded her of herself: bored professionalism.

Jean snapped her cell phone shut. “They say the waiting list is two weeks long.”

Gold drummed his fingers on his cane. “Let me see what I can do.”

Necessity forced him to leave not long after. Parting, Jean was sure, would be easier if they could seal their good-byes with touches and romantic sentiments, but Gold was understandably wary of letting themselves get too accustomed to indulging themselves. Kissing behind closed doors was sure to bleed out into the rest of their lives in some form or fashion. If Regina was looking for indications that the imp lurked beneath Mr. Gold’s skin, awake and acting against her, to reach for Belle as though it was natural would be as clear a sign as if he announced to the entire town that his name was Rumplestiltskin.

Her routine for the rest of the evening was much the same as it ever had been. That was Storybrooke. Nothing changed.

The next morning, she awoke to find a voicemail on her phone. The _Daily Mirror_ had run her ad after all. Jean pulled on her robe and shuffled to the hallway to fetch her copy of the paper. Sure enough, she opened to the classifieds and found her ad. Gold must have called to remove some of his own to make room. There was no sense in running ads for properties that would never be filled. No one in this town ever moved.

In fact, her eyes raking over the different homes available, Jean thought her ad was the only one at all reasonable for a single woman looking for temporary accommodations. Fully furnished, utilities included and because it was a roommate situation, the rent was half of what apartments with comparable square footage asked for. And if that alone was not enough, with Gold wanting her to stay with Jean, he could make unreasonable demands with regard to the lease to push her in that direction should Emma choose something else. If the Savior still had a home and a job back at where ever it was she came from, just asking for first and last month’s rent upfront might be enough to put her off a solo situation.

Jean’s walk to work was more cheerful than it had ever been. Just being proactive about something felt amazing. The rest of the town might not feel it yet, but change had arrived.

At precisely 10:13 AM, Jean’s mobile rang. “Jean O’Hara speaking.”

The voice on the other end was not a familiar one. She wasn’t expecting it to be. No one called at 10:13. “Hi, I’m calling about the ad.”

“Hi! I’m so glad to hear from someone!”

“My name is Emma. Emma Swan.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter presented to you by the beta stylings of Darthmelyanna, plot accompaniment by Ramurphy2005.


	3. Chapter 3

The tines gleamed. A few dabs of polish and an old rag had done wonders on the forked end of the trident, but the gilt work that wound down the staff still had pockets of accumulated _something_ that Belle couldn’t manage to completely scrub away. The blunt end was equally frustrating. Some sort of intricate insignia adorned the tip, but it the layers of grime made it impossible to see what the artisan had intended to convey. The details were so small and fine that she couldn’t wipe polish in and out of every crevasse. It could be the mark of a monarch or signify adherence to a particular god or goddess. Perhaps it was the original owner’s family crest.

“What are you up to?”

“I’m _trying_ to clean this.” Belle had brought a pile of books about mermaid lore and politics down from the library when she decided to make understanding the trident her project for the morning. Maybe she should have scoured the library for books on tools to use when polishing decorative embellishments. A rag was not up to the task.

“You, ah…” Rumple paused. “You don’t have to do that.”

She turned from the trident. Rumple shifted on his toes. “I have to do _something_.”

He crossed the room towards her. “No, you don’t. You can do whatever you want.”

Belle offered him a crooked smile. “But what I _want_ to do is examine your collection.”

“Oh. Ah, well. That’s all right, then.”

“The etchings on this trident are beautiful—at least, I think they would be, if I could see them clearly.”

“Ah.” Rumple clicked his tongue and leaned against the arm of the settee she was sitting on. “That piece really wasn’t intended to spend a century or two outside of the ocean.”

“So it _is_ mermaid in origin. I thought so. How did you get it?”

“Why, the spoils of war against a sea king, my dear.”

Belle frowned. “So not a deal.”

Rumple crossed his ankles. “I have too many legs for deals with their kind.”

She shivered. His hand had crept into her hair, his claws delicately brushing against her neck as he wove the mass of curls she had tied off around his fingers. Belle didn’t know if Rumple had a particular fixation on her hair or if he merely considered it a touch that answered his desire for intimacy without any power sapping consequences. Her scalp tingled. Belle felt him lift her hair off her neck, heard him shift as he rubbed her tresses against his cheek.

The little thrill rushed down her neck, over her arms. Her flesh pebbled.

How picky _was_ True Love? It appeared to be a magic as mysterious as it was powerful. She had found almost nothing in the tower library. Did the magical properties of True Love’s Kiss require puckering? Suppose she just took his bottom lip between hers and _sucked_ on it. Would that be safe? Or, he was often making odd little noises with his tongue. Would magic notice if Rumple licked her?

Belle swallowed, her grip on the trident so tight her knuckles had turned white. She shook her head a bit, and Rumple let her hair slip free of his grasp. As long as experimenting was impossible, questioning the specifics of the magic was not helpful. The search for Rumple’s son came first.

He was a parent first. Belle didn’t begrudge Rumple’s priorities. His son _should_ come first. But accepting that she was second in his heart did not make it any easier when she craved more of him than she was allowed to have. Forcing herself to be steady, she got up and returned the trident to its podium. Careful to hide any tremors that might try to escape through her voice, Belle changed the subject. “Where were you last night?”

“Deals after dusk is in vogue with princesses, it seems.”

“I’m not a princess.”

He waved her off. Belle didn’t really expect him to care about the hierarchy of knighthood, nobility and royalty. There were kings and queens in her bloodline if she traced it back far enough, but her father had been a minor noble, charged with the administration and protection of a tiny corner of the kingdom. Like the rest of her homeland, it had had a small population and an economy rooted in the king’s right hand.

As far as she could tell, the only aspect of her lineage Rumple had particularly cared about when he bargained for her was that she had been an idle member of the ruling class. He had apparently had some fantasy built around humiliating a noble with discomfort and labor, but that had not quite worked out for him. In retrospect, she doubted very much he minded. Now that she was no longer his servant, Rumple expected she lay around the castle doing nothing. The cooking and laundry she gave up without any qualms, but curating his collection was far too interesting to abandon. Preparing his tea simply made him _happy._

“Do you know Snow White?”

So she was the princess he had been called to wait upon last night. “I know of her,” Belle answered. “We’ve never met. What did she want?” She returned to the settee, sitting with her back against the arm opposite the one Rumple was leaning against.

He pulled a mockery of a sad face. “To forget her True Love.”

“What? That’s terrible!”

Rumple shrugged. “Indeed.”

“Do you _have_ something that can do that?”

Sly, he said, “I may know if a little potion, easy to procure, able to make you forget what ails you.”

Belle’s stomach dropped. “If—if I hadn’t come back, would you have used it on yourself?”

“Oh, no.” His tone was low, barely short of menacing. “I consider loss a _highly_ motivating experience.”

She shimmied across the settee and Rumple’s face in her hands. Beneath her fingers, his skin was rough. He leaned into the touch, his eyes sliding halfway closed. His posture was so inviting…  Belle bit her lip. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

Rumple’s lips twitched. He opened his eyes. “As am I.”

Her hands dropped to his shoulders. She trailed her fingers down the arm closer to her until she caught his hand. “Do you think Princess Snow will?”

“I hardly think it matters if she does or not. Her prince is not the giving up sort.”

Belle’s brow furrowed. “If he wants to be with her, why does she want to forget him?”

“He’s engaged to someone else.”

“Oh.”

“Your Princess Abigail, in fact.”

“That can’t be,” Belle protested. “Abigail is engaged to Sir Frederick. Everyone knows that.”

Rumple raised his eyebrows. “The good news is not traveling as fast as you might think, then. King George and King Midas have already picked out the wedding china. Hideous, by the way.” He waited for her to laugh before continuing. “But, as I said, Prince Charming isn’t the type to give up.”

“King George’s son is Prince James.”

“Oh, the dear prince’s name is a good deal more complicated than _that.”_

Belle smirked. “I suppose you are the authority on complicated names, Rumplestiltskin.”

He squeezed her hand. “We are in for a world of trouble if I’m not.”

Oddities surrounded him. Belle suspected he liked it that way. It was another form of armor. His mottled skin, his dragon hide coats, his theatrical behaviors were all just ways to keep people at arm’s length. If so few people realized there was a person beneath the image of the Dark One, it was because he purposefully kept them from seeing it out. But that remark was strange even for him. “You are making this all sound dire. Why is this so important to you?”

“You live _here_ now, darling. It’s our civic duty to be invested in Snow’s future. She’ll be the queen once they knock old Regina off the throne.”

Queen Regina was another of those enigmas. “I’m never sure if you’re a supporter of the queen or a dissenter.”

Rumple pursed his lips. “Let’s suppose I’m both. But, since I can see you are a bloodhound after _all_ my secrets, what’s the harm in divulging one more? Powerful magic is an interest of mine.”

“You? _No._ I don’t believe it.”

He grinned. “I kept the secret well, didn’t I? I have never managed to bottle a potion made from True Love, but unless I am much mistaken, Snow and Charming are ideal candidates.”

“What’s wrong with _ours?”_  

Rumple appeared flummoxed. “There’s—that’s not—I’m not doing this for fun.”

“That doesn’t explain why you need to use theirs when we have it, too.”

“It’s to weaken the curse. The one that will get me—us—to Bae. Our love isn’t ... _applicable_ to this particular situation.”

Belle supposed that was reasonable enough. Rumple knew from a seer that he would not be the person to break the curse. Still… “Does it have to be _useful?_ Couldn’t we also do it because we want to?”

“Sweetheart…” Judging from his tone and hesitancy, he seemed to be moving towards a refusal. But then he said, “ _Yes._ Yes, we can. Practice makes perfect, and so on and so on.”

For Rumple to magically transport them to his laboratory would be a simple task, but they walked. For all her enthusiasm about a True Love potion, Belle was still a bit wary of magic. Rumple was endlessly fond of declaring that all magic came with a price, but he also used it to solve every minor inconvenience he encountered. She would much rather walk to the laboratory than be magicked there if he had to pay some unseen toll to do it.

True Love potion, though, that must be like fairy magic: good magic. _Light_ magic. To bottle something so wonderful must be good for him. Until they reached the Land Without Magic, he would remain cursed, so for now to encourage him to do positive acts and light magic would have to suffice.

The laboratory was a den of magic. Belle almost felt that she could see it, radiating off everything. Shelves of spell books lined the walls. In a little out of the way nook, there was a spinning wheel surrounded by piles of yarn and gold thread. Potions simmered and bubbled on the tables. Artifacts less benign than the ones in the Great Hall had their podiums here.

Rumple dropped Belle’s hand and busied himself with the preparations.

“What do you need me to do?”

“Just a strand of your hair will do, my dear.”

She smiled. _Of course_ it was her hair he needed. Careful not to touch anything, Belle looked around the laboratory. “Are these scissors safe or will they do something horrible to me if I cut my hair with them?”

Rumple turned around and looked at the scissors she was pointing at. They were lying on a table, the very picture of utilitarian innocence. “Those are my sewing shears. They are safe.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure I use them for sewing.”

Belle picked up the shears. They looked like something that belonged in a sewing kit. She didn’t feel any different for having touched them. “How often would you say you sew?”

“Often as I want. I’ll teach you sometime.”

“I can sew.” She ran her fingers through her hair to separate out one strand and ignored the sotto voce huff that sounded a bit too much like Rumple disagreeing.

He beckoned her closer with a curling finger. Belle presented the hair to him, which he took and dropped into a vial. Then, he plucked a hair from his own head and did the same.

Belle’s eyes widened as the two strands of hair reacted to each other, twisting and transforming and expanding until the little vial was filled with a golden potion. Small white beads of light swirled around as though they were trying to escape the bottle.

“It’s beautiful,” Belle breathed. “What will you do with it?”

Rumple held the vial up, looking at it from every angle. “Admire it.” He sounded awestruck.

She knew he was insecure. For him, the potion would be a magical solution to a very human need for reassurance and affection. “Here.” Taking up the scissors again, Belle cut off a lock of her hair.

He tore his eyes away from the potion and frowned. “What are you doing?”

“Giving you a gift. A token of affection.” He might like magical mementos of their relationship, but she could offer more ordinary ones as well. Belle could read the reluctance on his face. “It’s not unusual for lovers to give each other locks of their hair. Didn’t Bae’s mother ever give you some of her hair?”

“No.”

Beneath the surface of that single word, there seemed to be something more lurking. Belle feared what she was not hearing was best translated to _‘No, she didn’t have any affection for me.’_ Bae’s mother had had Rumple before he was cursed, when he was a man able to give his love freely. Jealousy of past relationships seemed inappropriate. He had been alive for centuries. But Bae’s mother had had him human. With the smooth skin and brown eyes that Belle had seen only for a single, fleeting moment. It hurt to think maybe she had not loved him.

“Do you have a ribbon? Or a piece of string?”

Rumple spread his arms. “I think I may be able to procure something of that kind.” Smoke engulfed one of his hands. When it cleared, he was holding a strand of his gold thread. “I trust this will do?”

“Thank you.” Belle tied the lock of hair together with the thread. “Here.” She took his hand, placed her gift on his palm and then folded his fingers over it. “You can keep it with you or put it in a special place. Whatever you want to do. Some people set hair in jewelry, but I’ve always thought that was strange. Love is between you and the person you love, not to show off to the rest of the world.”

“Huh.” Rumple stared at their joined hands as though he thought what they contained might bite him. “Thank you?”

* * *

Emma Swan liked to call herself a loner, but she was always surrounded by people. Naturally, her son had carved out his place in her life, but he wasn’t the only one. Everyone who met Emma seemed drawn into her orbit almost immediately. Jean wondered if Emma’s self-proclaimed loner status was because she was accustomed to those orbiting people hurting her or if she had never had any before Storybrooke. Maybe everyone being so taken with her was just a byproduct of being the Savior. Even when they didn’t know, they _knew._

Or maybe it was just the novelty of someone new in town.

Emma moved in on a Thursday with no possessions but the odds and ends she had in her car. A courier would arrive with her things soon, she said, and Jean wasn’t sure precisely how that would work. Mail happened. New people entering town didn’t. Until then, Emma was wearing borrowed clothes and emotional armor.

Emma reminded Jean of Rumple. She didn’t wear vulnerability well. She was perpetually wary. Jean supposed it was a good thing when one’s job was to make an enemy out of an evil queen.

The Savior had charisma, though. Any other person in her position might draw pity, but not Emma Swan. Emma Swan simply made you believe she could handle anything and everything the world wanted to throw at her. A malicious mayor or a night spent sleeping in her car or the boy she gave up for adoption turning her life upside down were things Emma Swan could deal with.

Friday night, when Jean lurched home, late, exhausted and with her arms full of folders and forms to complete over the weekend, she was not surprised to hear voices in the kitchen. Emma Swan the Loner had a guest, which was precisely the sort of behavior Jean expected from Emma Swan, Certified Loner.

Snow White.

What was her cursed name? Snow was a teacher. She couldn’t afford an accountant. Despite twenty-eight years living in the same small town, Jean could not recall her name.

She dropped her folders on the couch and hung up her coat. Melody? Megan. No. Margie?

She slipped into the kitchen where Emma and Snow were seated at the table, each one with their hands wrapped around a mug.

“Hi!”

Her greeting must not have been as cheerful as she was hoping because Emma asked, “Long day?”

“They all are.”

“You know Mary Margaret, right?”

_Mary Margaret._ “Yeah.” Jean grinned. “Hi. How are you?”

Snow smiled back, all sincerity and sweetness. “We were just discussing my date tonight. I had better go get ready.”

Resisting the call of small town gossip required a person be made of stronger stuff than Jean. Putting the kettle on, she insisted, “Dish!”

“Mary Margaret has an evening with a coma patient planned.”

“Wait.” Jean pulled a canister of tea out of the cabinet. “I don’t get it. Is _he_ the boring one or is Mary Margaret and either way, why would you go out with him?”

“He is _literally_ a coma patient.” Emma sighed. “It’s a ...whole...thing.”

“How many pots of tea is it going to take before I understand the thing?”

“I’m going to the hospital to read to a coma patient,” Mary Margaret answered. “We were just being silly because I had a lousy date last night.”

“Is that a new kind of therapy? Reading to coma patients, I mean, not lousy dates.”

Emma and Mary Margaret looked at each other. “Kinda?” Emma replied. “Just not for John Doe.”

“I’m still missing something here.”

“You know Henry, right?” Emma asked.

Jean nodded. “Not personally or anything, but the mayor’s kid, yeah.”

Mary Margaret turned on her Parent-Teacher Conference voice. “He’s such a bright boy, but he’s lonely. I thought stories with happy endings could help him feel hopeful about the future so I gave him a book of fairy tales I found.”

“But somehow,” Emma cut in, “He got this idea in his head that the stories all really happened.”

With an uneasy feeling, Jean nodded again. Snow White had a book? Did Gold know? Was this a part of the plan that he had overlooked telling her about?

“He has a really active imagination”—

“Which is a great thing!” The Parent-Teacher voice struck again.

“But we can’t talk him out of it. We need to show him that fairy tales are just stories.”

Jean forced her mouth to work. “Right. Just stories. By reading to a coma patient?”

Mary Margaret sighed. “He thinks I’m Snow White and that the John Doe in the hospital is Prince Charming. He thinks if I read the Snow White tale in the book to John Doe, he’ll wake up because of true love.”

True Love was the most powerful magic in all the realms. How many times had Rumple told her that? If anything was going to revive Prince Charming, it must be Snow White. That he was in a coma explained why Jean couldn’t remember seeing a cursed version of David-James-Charming walking around town.

“So the plan is to just read to him?”

“Yeah,” Emma answered. “We’ll report to Henry first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Don’t the stories say you should wake someone up with True Love’s Kiss?”

Mary Margaret laughed. “That’s against hospital policy, Jean. I’m hoping. Anyway, if I’m going to get in before volunteer hours are over, I better go.”

* * *

Saturday morning greeted Jean with an empty apartment and a pile of paperwork. She rolled over in bed and allowed herself a scant few minutes to fantasize about calling Gold and inviting him to come over. Now that she had a roommate, she no longer had the privacy she once enjoyed. But Emma was reporting to Henry this morning. What use was privacy when you had no one to share it with?

Jean picked up her phone. It wasn’t suspicious that he was one of her contacts. All of her clients were. Regina had the Savior to worry about now. How close an eye could she really keep on anyone?

_How’s Prince Charming?_

Jean frowned. There was reasonable degree of skepticism over Mayor Mills’s ability to keep abreast of her citizens and there was just being sloppy. She deleted the text and wrote, _What did Mary Margaret say?_

Emma didn’t respond.

It was hard to judge the texting habits of someone you just met.

Jean hauled herself out of bed, made a pot of tea and devoted herself to ignoring the files she brought home. It was bad enough that the job Regina saddled her with took up all her days and most of her evenings. Why must it encroach upon her weekends, too? Whether she was in the Enchanted Forest or Storybrooke, her work-life balance was all or nothing.

Her phone trilled.

_He woke up._

Jean stared at the message, reading it over three times before she felt she fully grasped the implications.

Snow White woke her prince. It had not even required anything as powerful as a kiss. The simple act of reading to him had been enough to ignite the magic that was True Love. The most powerful magic in all the realms was alive in Storybrooke.

She sent _OMG_ , then _Keep me posted_.

She stared at her phone.

Gold needed to know.

He answered with a flat and impersonal, “Miss O’Hara.”

“Hi. Are you at the shop?”

“I am.”

“Do you have any customers?”

“No, I’m in my office. Why? What’s going on?”

Jean bit her lip. They had never discussed phone tapping. Could Regina tap a mobile phone? She didn’t know enough about the technology of this world. If she had thought before she called him, she would have realized heading to the shop in person was the better idea. Jean had lived in this town for twenty-eight years. She knew the pawn shop was open on Saturdays. She did his bookkeeping. She knew how infrequent his actual sales were.

Words like _Snow White_ and _Prince Charming_ should not roll off her tongue. Not until she was sure about bugs and phone tapping.

“Do you remember telling me about our civic duty?”

The pause was long before he said, “Yes.”

“There seems to be a development on that front?” Jean winced.

“How so?”

“Oh...some long dormant patriotism just reignited.”

“I’m not following, Miss O’Hara.”

“Um, there’s a stubborn guy you know. He’s back. Because civics.”

“Does this fellow have a name?” Gold paused. “Or is it simply too complicated?”

Jean relaxed. “Second one.”

She heard him hum. “You have a new roommate. How is that situation working?”

“She’s working.”

“Excellent.”

The rarest of all magical beasts, a customer, wandered into Gold’s shop. With reluctance, he hung up the phone to go perform his best semblance of customer service.

There were no texts from Emma.

The hours ticked by. Jean did some tidying, ignored her files for the duration of three chapters of a book she’d been meaning to read and finally submitted to the call of work, her files spread out across the kitchen table.

It was well past dark when Emma returned. The suspense had carried Jean through three unanswered texts and one and half pots of tea.

“What happened?”

Emma groaned and dropped into a chair. “He woke during the night, snuck out of the hospital and went wandering around the woods. We found him half-drowned. Mary Margaret did mouth-to-mouth and he’s somehow okay.”

Jean pursed her lips. The questions she had had in another lifetime about the specifics of True Love were answered. Once the mouth was involved, it seemed magic _noticed_.

“Then,” Emma continued, “Regina shows up with his wife and am I crazy or is that sketchy as _hell?_ He’s been in a coma for years and no one says a word and then the minute he wakes up, here’s his wife! She’s been in town the entire time and never looked for him.”

Jean’s fingers drummed against the handle of her mug. “No...that’s sketchy.” Charming’s wife was Snow. Who was this interloper and what did Regina have to gain by producing a fake wife?

“Regina...I don’t know. Maybe I’m just paranoid. I don’t like how she treats Henry and then I feel like everything she does is suspicious.”

“No.” Jean shook her head. “It’s strange. How did Henry take it?”

“Convinced of his fairy tale theory as ever.” Emma snorted. “Probably even more now.”

“Hey.” Jean sipped her tea. She had no idea who Emma had been in the Enchanted Forest. “Who does he think you are?”

“That’s the craziest part. He thinks I’m Snow White and Prince Charming’s daughter.”

Jean dropped her mug.

It shattered on the tile floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter brought to you by the beta'ing and patience of Darthmelyanna.


	4. Chapter 4

_Thumbelina’s Compendium of Magical Flora_ identified seven varieties of pixie flower. Given Rumple’s prejudice against fairies, Belle had intended to skip that section once the bold header **Pixie** caught her eye. Needling him to consider fairies the answer to his prayers would have been answered with enmity, not an open mind. He had been abandoned by one fairy. Another had stolen his son. Belle accepted his anger.

But, she also accepted that she was not the sort of person who purposefully discounted potentially useful information.

She read the entry anyway.

Belle was glad she did. Fairies were not a common sight in the Enchanted Forest, but they were not _uncommon_ , either. People generally had a working knowledge of fairies, what they did and the source of their power. Belle had always thought pixie dust was a type of fairy dust. This was a common misconception, Thumbelina assured her readers, but _entirely_ false. Pixie dust was produced by several different cultivars of pixie flower, each with its own growing conditions and magical properties. Although the best known variety was used by fairies, the others had no association with them whatsoever.

_Pixie cultivar Malum grows only on land which has been touched by great evil. The dust harvested from these flowers is able to reunite any people who share True Love._

Belle bit her lip. The _Compendium_ was not intended to be a comprehensive source of information on any given plant. It was a list of every known magical plant. Thumbelina was the sort of author Belle loved—she provided extensive citations. Hopefully, Rumple had at least one of the texts Thumbelina cited as a definitive work on pixie flowers. Like the rest of his collection, the library in Rumple’s laboratory had been built over the course of hundreds of years. He hoarded information with the same zeal he did artifacts.

Belle’s ears pricked. The click of his boots up the staircase was unmistakable. _Walking_ was a habit she was pleased to see Rumple develop. Before, it had been merely a tool for manipulation. He could feed information to a mark as they moved towards whatever dramatic reveal he had planned. When he was in one room of the castle, but wished to be in another, Rumple had used magic. In the past weeks, startling Belle had lost its appeal. He preferred to be expected—happily anticipated—when he made his entrance.

The night Belle came home, Rumple told her he knew when he was wanted. His abilities did not include mind-reading, of that she was certain, but he did seem aware every time a quiet little wish bloomed in her heart. Anytime she was associating the thought of him with want or hope, he just _knew._

Observation suggested this sense was general. Rumple considered himself summoned when he felt it, but he never displayed any knowledge of what she wanted.

These pseudo-summonings tended to very quickly become about what _he_ wanted.

Case in point, when Belle was hoping to find one of the books Thumbelina listed in the laboratory, Rumple sauntered into the library and without as much as a hello, snapped his fingers and Belle’s practical morning dress was transformed into a ball gown.

He crooked his finger. _Come here._ With a flattered laugh, Belle laid the _Compendium_ aside and stood.

She would not credit the idea that he had taken the time to sew a gown, but she supposed the fact that he was a particularly talented tailor helped ensure that what clothing he magicked into existence was well constructed.

Rumple drew a circle in the air with his finger. _Twirl._

There was such volume to the skirt that it seemed made for twirling. (It probably was.) Rumple had clearly been inspired by the dress she wore the day they met. Both gowns were made of golden silk with a tight bodice, bare shoulders and a wide skirt, but everything about this dress was _moreso_. Layers of petticoats gave the skirt a fullness her old one had not had. The bodice molded to her perfectly.

He snapped his fingers again and the gold gown was gone, replaced by a similar one in blue. Belle ran her fingers over the skirt, feeling subtle beadwork that the previous gown had not had.

“I prefer the gold,” Rumple said, “but that may be a personal bias. Blue brings out your eyes.”

Belle couldn’t contain her smile. “Why am I trying on ball gowns?”

“So that we know which one looks best, of course!” Rumple snapped his fingers yet again. He made a face at the result—pale pink, long sleeves, covered shoulders—and put her back in the gold gown.

“Why?”

Rumple fixed his eyes on her bodice. Belle flushed. He flapped his hand and stitches marched up her skirt, and across her chest. The gown embroidered itself. “Hm.”

“Rumple! What is this all about?”

“To prepare you for a ball!”

“We were invited to a ball?” Belle wished she had better concealed her shock. The wealthy wore desperation as often as the poor. Rumple had made deals with at least half of the kings and queens in the Enchanted Forest. She had not realized he was regarded with enough courtesy that he was invited to balls.

But Rumple only laughed. “Oh, no, my dear, no one invites _me_ to a ball! Imagine the damper on festivities _that_ would be! But you, you were a princess”—

“No, I wasn’t.”

—“you, they would invite, should you wish it.”

Belle smoothed her gown. Rumple assumed balls were just the sort of thing a woman of her station would enjoy. She had certainly attended many balls before coming to the Dark Castle. Gently bred young women seeking an advantageous marriage were at the height of their power while dancing. Her responsibility to her people meant she had felt all the pressure to make a match. She had accepted Gaston to protect her town. She had left with Rumple for the same reason. The part of her life that included balls ended the day she accepted his deal. If she wished, Rumple was willing to reopen that chapter.

 _Did_ she want it?

“Why would you send me to a ball alone?”

He appeared puzzled. “For you to enjoy yourself.”

She loved him, but she also knew him well enough to know his generosity came with a catch. “What do you get out of it?”

Rumple slapped his palm against his chest in a mockery of offense. “The satisfaction of knowing you enjoyed yourself.”

Belle furrowed her brow. “It’s just so sudden. Why now?”

“Nothing sudden about it. Prince Thomas’s annual gala is not for another two weeks. You have plenty of time to decide.” He walked in a circle around her, eyes sweeping over her gown from every angle. “Me, I love a ball. Housebound little girls desperate for a silk gown and a dance with the prince make deals they don’t understand so fast your head would spin.”

She frowned. Rumple’s deals were about Bae. Sometimes, one deal must initiate a cascade of deals before he achieved his purpose, but they were all ultimately about adding something new to his collection or his knowledge base, another little something that would get him incrementally closer to finding Bae. Peasant women lacked that kind of power. Why should Rumple interfere with their lives? “What do these women have that you could want?”

A smile blossomed across his face. “You must be more open-minded, darling. Not everything I want is earth-shattering. Sometimes my needs are very small. Why, sometimes I make deals with people that have nothing I want at all. Should they acquire something valuable later,” he shrugged, “I’ll come by and collect.” Rumple waggled his fingers at her, as though preparing more magic. “Now, do you wish to go or not?”

* * *

She went.

If pressed, Belle would have been able to provide lots of reasons why she eventually decided to go. The first was the location. She enjoyed travel and this particular ball happened to be in a different kingdom.

The second was homesickness. It had been over a year since she left her father’s home. She had not met with anyone from her old life since. Kingdoms in the Enchanted Forest were many and small. To a degree, the courts of the kings and queens all ran together. She was confident she would be reunited with someone from King Midas’s court. Belle didn’t care if she danced at all if she could learn some news from home.

And finally, she felt a bit of responsibility towards Rumple’s Deal Girl.

There were probably many such _housebound little girls,_ but only one had been selected for a deal with the Dark One. He chose her well in advance and the particulars he shared with Belle were vague. Blond. Young. Usually wore rags. Did manual labor. He didn’t tell Belle what he intended for the young woman to wear. She would wear whatever felt right in the moment.

By Belle’s estimation, a gown was a grossly frivolous reason to make a deal with Rumplestiltskin. But how could she, with her genteel upbringing and comfortable life, judge the feelings of peasant women? When all you knew was a life of the sort of poverty Belle could not imagine, then one beautiful gown and night of dancing might be worth any price. If this girl was prepared to sacrifice anything for the chance to meet the prince, then Belle wanted to make sure she danced with that prince.

A task rendered impossible as long as she did not know who the Deal Girl was.

Rumple had not told her the young woman’s name. Belle was certain he knew it. He had a _thing_ about names. But he also had a thing about being needlessly dramatic. He had indulged in a lot of pomp and flair when she first knew him, but over time, he had stopped making the effort of keeping his masks on at home. Even still, he had not be able to resist challenging Belle to figure out who his Deal Girl was on her own.

The reverse was not true.

Belle’s name was announced at the ball upon her entrance. The hall filled immediately with the buzz of hundreds of people urgently whispering. Belle moved down the steps and into the throng of bodies. She scanned the room for familiar faces. At a ball this size, she expected to have to jostle and struggle to move through the crowd, but people seemed to part for her.

And avoid eye contact.

Her ears began to pick up on specific words amid the steady buzz of dozens upon dozens of conversations happening at once. Belle heard one phrase over and over.

_The Dark One._

She walked towards the balcony, moving purposefully through the crowd, trying to catch as many snippets as she could.

“...sold _herself…”_

“Poor thing.”

“What does he do to her?”

“The king should give her asylum. She can’t go back.”

How had she not anticipated this? Belle never thought her promise to Rumple would be a secret. Her father’s knights knew. Word must spread across the Enchanted Forest. Belle had chosen to sacrifice herself. It was her life, her freedom, her dreams and her future. The opinions of those left behind were irrelevant. Her choice was justified. With the lives and prosperity of so many at stake, to agree to Rumple’s terms had been the only thing she could do.

But Rumple let her go. She had returned to the Dark Castle out of a desire to be with him. He didn’t lock her away. In the eyes of society, she was still a victim. Talk of a daring rescue buzzed around her, but no one was brave enough to defy Rumplestiltskin. He would kill, maim and torture anyone that laid a hand on his pretty pet.

No one asked her to dance, either.

Somehow, she was not surprised.

Belle had been accustomed to balls, once. So many months of only Rumple for company left her disoriented in the face of so many people. The whispers and the isolation were horrifying. The music was not loud enough that couples could dance on the balcony. It wasn’t until she was in the crisp air that she realized how difficult it was to breathe in the ballroom. She gripped the railing and steadied herself.

Those people were hypocrites.

Everyone had a breaking point. Everyone could withstand only so much pain before a deal with the Dark One became more attractive than soldiering on nobly. For Belle, it had been losing her mother to the ogres. For Deal Girl, it had been living everyday without hope for the future. Every last one of them was willing to accept the necessity of the Dark One in the world. Whether they had been forced to confront it or not, everyone had a price. And Rumplestiltskin was there, a malevolent force willing and able to salve their suffering, provided they pay.

She didn’t hear a single whisper suggesting maybe she _liked_ him.

Or that maybe, just maybe, there was a _person_ beneath those scales.

No one in the ballroom knew that someone once called Rumple _Papa_ and that all he really wanted was to hear that voice again. They didn’t know he spun wool into yarn or that he got lost in the hypnotic motion of the wheel. They didn’t know he had a sense of humor and it was honestly terrible. They didn’t know he kept the kettle warm all day because he always wanted another cup of tea. They didn’t know how painfully sentimental he was. They didn’t know he felt love. They didn’t know he was afraid.

Belle pillowed her arms on the balcony rail and spent the night watching people flit around the courtyard. She couldn’t rouse herself to join a party where those that knew her name considered her story to be one of victimhood and terror instead of sacrifice, heroism and True Love. Now and again, she caught the eye of a man looking at her, but none approached. That was fine. Belle didn’t care to waltz with anyone who could not believe in the humanity of the most vulnerable man she knew.

Somewhere in the crush was Deal Girl. Belle smiled to herself. Maybe if she searched the room for a young blond woman who did not look at her askance, she would find the person Rumple sent to the ball tonight. It couldn’t be just the two of them. Surely many people had made deals.

Belle stirred at the sound of commotion in the courtyard. She stood on her toes and leaned over the railing as far as she could. A girl in a blue gown was running across the courtyard, pursued by a man. When he stopped, Belle realized that was Prince Thomas himself. He bent to pick up something Belle could not make out in the darkness.

“Glass?”

Whatever the prince had found, it was clear. Belle tried to relax her eyes, let herself watch for the way candlelight warped and reflected off the object. She squinted. A shoe?

The fleeing girl had lost a glass shoe?

Behind her, from inside the ballroom, a clock chimed.

Belle grinned. A glass shoe lost during a dramatic midnight flight? That had Rumple written all over it.

* * *

The magic that whisked Belle back to the Dark Castle came for her around 2 AM, a more fashionable hour to leave a ball. She inhaled deeply, savoring the smell of home. It was so quiet. No whispering, no buzzing. No hundreds of bodies gathered in one room, making it hot and overly perfumed.

Rumple had brought her straight the Great Hall. At the end of the table, the kettle was warm. She made tea. With a contented sigh, she sat on the table and let her shoes fall off her feet. They made a satisfying _thud_ on the carpet.

“How was your evening?” Rumple appeared at her side with magical abruptness. So much for his taking up walking. She was too happy to see him to mind.

“I think the ball part of my life is over.”

His face fell. “You didn’t like it.”

“No.”

“Who do I need to kill?”

Belled nudged his shoulder. “No one. I should have known I wouldn’t like going someplace you aren’t welcome.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

Belle set her teacup and saucer on the table and hopped down. Without her shoes, the hem of her gown dragged on the floor. “I love you.” She reached for his hands and Rumple obliged by letting her pull him off the table.

“Did the prince dance with Ella?”

Belle pressed one of Rumple’s hands to her waist. “Your girl with the glass shoes?”

He appeared considerably cheered. “I knew you’d notice!”

“I don’t know that they danced,” Belle admitted, holding Rumple’s other hand aloft, “but she certainly made a strong impression.”

“I thought she might.”

Belle stepped backwards with one foot, urging Rumple forward by pressing his shoulder. He moved towards her. “Are you matchmaking again?”

“We all have our hobbies.”

She stepped to the side. He followed. “Ella and Thomas—are they True Love?”

“Yes, I think so.” Rumple began to lead.

“They just met.” She was assuming they met tonight. But if they were already a couple, they wouldn’t have needed Rumple’s interference, would they?

“I have a certain sense about things.”

Belle snorted. “Of course.” She shifted closer to him without breaking the gentle rhythm of the dance. Her hand slipped from his shoulder to his back. She tucked her head against his neck. “Why were you so kind to Ella?”

“I wasn’t.”

“I think you were.”

Rumple hugged her close. “You always were a strange one.”

“She doesn’t have anything you want. You gave her True Love for free.”

Belle felt him chuckle. “Maybe I just like to have people owe me.”

* * *

Henry was a bright boy. Special. Possessed an active imagination.

He could be wrong.

Somehow, someone other than Regina, Gold and Jean knew all about the curse and the identities of Storybrooke’s citizens, but that didn’t mean Henry was right about everything. He was only a child. It would be wrong to expect that just because he had a mysterious book, he was infallible. Kids reached silly conclusions. It was part of being a kid, wasn’t it? They tried to analyze what they were experiencing, but because their perspective was limited, they got it wrong.

Henry could be wrong.

Jean spent the next week telling herself all the reasons why Henry was wrong.

There were not many of them.

He was right.

Rumple trusted very few people, and with good reason. The list of people who would not stab him in the back given the opportunity was short. Herself. Jefferson. Prince Charming was on one list, but not the other. He was heroic and pure of heart, and Rumple trusted him. Charming had thrown him in a dungeon, but they could overlook that.

But what Jean needed were memories of Snow White and what memories she had did not put her mind at ease. Snow had been pregnant. Mary Margaret was not. She must have given birth sometime between the last time Belle saw her and when the curse hit. The curse wanted to make its victims miserable and drive apart families, but Ella was still pregnant so it didn’t affect unborn children.

There were no tiny little newborn children keeping the wrong parents awake all night for the past twenty-eight years. Snow’s baby was gone. And Emma Swan was in her late twenties.

Then there was the purple potion Rumple had made from Snow and Charming’s hair. True Love could break any curse. Even though it must be unnecessary, Rumple had magicked the curse scroll away from Maleficent long enough to pour a drop of potion on it. He refused to use the gold potion they made; it had to be the purple one.

There was no reason why any curse required a Savior to break it. Light was stronger than darkness. The curse that could not be torn apart by light magic did not exist. But this curse, this purposefully weakened curse, _did._

The purple potion and the Savior were born of the same Love.

Henry was right.

For a week, Jean alternated between tears and grief or desperate optimism. When the evidence was viewed together, Emma’s true identity certainly _appeared_ conclusive. But Henry was ten years old and his authority came from a storybook. It could all be a coincidence. He could be wrong.

Jean so badly wanted to believe Henry was wrong that sometimes, she almost did.

On Saturday, Emma’s things arrived.

Emma Swan was not sentimental. Twenty-eight years of life in the world beyond Storybrooke and her possessions totaled: clothes, a tape recorder, a camcorder, assorted dishes and kitchen gadgetry and a baby blanket.

It was the blanket that hurt the most. Emma had opened all the boxes—no more than five—when they arrived so that she could sort through all her belongs and put them away. Jean stared at the blanket with a sick feeling welling up in her belly. She knew homespun yarn when she saw it, knew the difference between something handknit and the machine knitting of this world. The name _Emma_ was embroidered across the bottom in purple thread.

Of course it was purple. What other color would it be?

“Jean?”

“Sorry." Jean picked up the blanket, turning it over in her hands. "Just...woolgathering.”

Emma cocked an eyebrow. “That was a terrible pun.”

Jean had to smile. “If you can believe it, I used to date a guy who spun wool _and_ made terrible jokes. But somehow, he missed that one.”

Emma laughed and started to make some remark about how surprising it was that that relationship hadn’t worked out, but she was interrupted by a knock at the door. Emma shuffled over a few feet and opened the it.

Standing in the hallway was Mr. Gold.

Jean stuffed the blanket back into the box, warring between a desire to yell at him until her voice was hoarse and weep on his shoulder. He directed all of his words to Emma, as though he didn’t even care that Jean was present.

“Hi, my name’s Mr. Gold. We met briefly on your arrival.”

Emma shook his hand. “I remember.”

He took one step into the apartment. “Good. I have a proposition for you, Miss Swan. I need your help. I’m looking for someone.”

“Really?”

Satisfied her eyes were dry, Jean cautiously approached. Gold couldn’t be speaking of Bae already. No one could leave town until the curse was broken. He acknowledged Jean with a slight nod and a soft, “Miss O’Hara,” and resumed speaking to Emma. “I have a photo. Her name is Ashley Boyd. She’s taken something quite valuable of mine.”

Emma took the photo.

Deal Girl. _Ella._ Jean bristled.

Unimpressed, Emma asked, “So, why don’t you just go to the police?”

Gold’s eyes flickered towards Jean’s. “Because…” He hesitated. “She’s a confused young woman. She’s pregnant. Alone and scared. I don’t want to ruin this young girl’s life. I just want my property returned.”

Once upon a time, a vague answer like that would have been accepted by Belle. She would have happily written into his words whatever nuance she wished. Perpetually wary, walls up Emma Swan had no patience for evasion. “What is it?”

Jean knew he wouldn’t give a straight answer. Emma probably knew it, too.

“Well, one of the advantages of you not being the police is discretion. Let’s just say it’s a precious object and leave it at that.”

Jean bit her cheek. She could tell. She _should_ tell. But if Emma knew what Gold was after, she probably wouldn’t help. It sounded like Ella was in some kind of trouble. But then, Gold was gifted at making things sound like one thing while they were really something else. Maybe Ella was fine. Could Jean take that risk?

Emma had apparently decided Gold wasn’t worth the effort of pushing. She abandoned the topic of what the item was and moved to finding Ashley. “When did you see her last?”

“Last night. That’s how I got this.” He pulled back the long fringe that framed his face to reveal a large gash on the side of his forehead. Despite being several hours old, it was still bright red. It looked like it might begin to bleed again at any moment.

Jean gasped before she could even think of concealing her reaction. He was _injured._ “I’ll get the first aid kit.” She hurried to the bathroom. Rumple was immortal. He didn’t _get_ hurt, not unless he wanted to. But they were in the Land Without Magic now and his body was as vulnerable as anyone else’s. He probably didn’t even remember how to dress an injury without magic.

The sounds of their conversation followed her as she scurried across the apartment, growing quieter and indistinct. Or maybe that was her head buzzing.

Emma.

Ella.

An injury.

_Bae._

The gash on Gold’s forehead was almost a relief. She knew how to think about that, what to do about it. Jean focused on that. One thing at a time.

When she returned to the living room, Henry was there, too.

Everything about Gold transformed in the presence of a child. He sincerely liked children. Jean couldn’t make sense of the way someone who moved babies like pawns on a chessboard could brighten so much when Henry walked into the room.

Maybe it was because he knew Henry’s name. He had a thing about names.

Gold’s softer manner with Henry was not mutual. Henry watched him with suspicion. Gold tried to make conversation with him, but Henry’s responses were short and came out like questions. Emma was putting on her jacket and looked ready to usher her son away from a too-interested almost-stranger, so Jean assumed they were finished with the missing person portion of the interview.

“Mr. Gold,” Jean said, “this way, please.”

He made one last remark to Henry and Emma a piece before following Jean to the kitchen. “Give my regards to your mother. And, good luck, Miss Swan.”

Jean waited for the footsteps to fade and the door to close again before she rounded on Gold. “After everything, you still can’t leave Ella alone? Please, just walk away.”

“It’s not that simple. Even if I were the forgiving sort”—Gold gestured to his head, “the contract is too valuable.”

Jean busied herself at the sink, lathering up a warm washcloth. “All she wants is her child. You of all people should understand that.”

“I do understand. As does Miss Swan.” Behind her, Jean heard him pull out a chair and sit. “That is precisely what makes her so valuable.”

“I can’t believe you are trying to justify terrorizing a teenage girl.”

“She broke into my shop, attacked me and stole the contract.”

Jean hesitated before reaching out to push Gold’s hair away from his face. It was inappropriate at best to think about running her hands through his hair. She dabbed at his cut with the cloth. “You’d do worse, if the situations were reversed.”

“But they aren’t.”

She had done her best to be gentle, but the cloth still came away red. “This might need stitches.”

“Now who’s dramatic?”

“No.” She dropped the cloth in the sink. Jean dried her hands and his forehead. “You don’t get to be playful right now.”

“I have no intention of taking her child. The contract was unfulfilled when the curse came and it brought it over.”

“I don’t know that that makes it _better,”_ Jean sighed. There were bandages in the first aid kit, but she guessed Gold would not be amenable to that. The cut _was_ on his face. She grabbed a tube of antibacterial ointment. “I mean, I’m glad you aren’t _actually_ trying to steal a baby, but now it feels like you’re just tormenting her for no reason.”

Gold clenched his jaw as Jean rubbed the ointment into the cut.

“Does that hurt?”

“No.”

She screwed the cap back on the ointment and debated sending him home with it. Jean didn’t want the cut to get infected, but he was perfectly capable of providing his own ointment. The entire urge to do it for him had been somewhat ridiculous, she supposed. He didn’t need her to be his nurse.

“Miss Swan will benefit from seeing herself as someone who rescued Miss Boyd. She has to learn to be the hero this town needs.”

“She’s Snow and Charming’s daughter.”

Gold closed his eyes. “Yes.”

“You ruined her life.”

“That’s rather extreme.”

Jean’s shoulders shook. She threw the ointment into the first aid kit. “Time was frozen. _We_ were frozen. Everyone was separated from their families, but we didn’t really miss anything. No one knew there was anything _to_ miss. When the curse is broken, everyone will be reunited with their loved ones. All the children will be the same age. Everyone gets their lives back but Emma. She grew up alone. You can’t undo that. And Snow and Charming! They missed her whole life!”

“I fail to see how that is my fault.”

It was the worst thing he could have said. _“You_ engineered all of this! _You_ made her the Savior! _You_ put her parents’ love in the curse! You didn’t _have_ to do any of that! Any curse can be broken! It didn’t _need_ a weakness!” Jean swallowed hard. Her face was wet. When had she started crying? “You didn’t need to ruin someone else’s family. You had True Love.”

“What I needed was a child born of True Love; what I had was insufficient.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Coldly, he said, “We both know I never touched you.”

That was the essence of his game, wasn’t it? A carefully phrased literal truth that could carry whatever nuance the listener wanted to hear. “Don’t pretend you were the gallant gentleman protecting my virtue. You were just scared.”

Gold looked incredulous. “Just listen to me. I can explain.”

“Yeah. I know you can. I just don’t think I want to listen right now.”

“Belle”—

“Don’t ‘Belle’ me, not now.”

“Jean”—

_“No.”_

“We are too close to everything we wanted.”

“Everything _you_ wanted.” Jean steadied herself against the back of one of the other chairs. “I think I need to do some thinking about what I want.”

“Please, we have come too far.”

Jean licked her lips. “I think you should go.”

Helplessly, he shook his head.

“Watch that cut. Don’t let it get infected.”

Gold rose to his feet. He began to reach for her. Jean backed away and his hand hung in the air.

“Good-bye, Mr. Gold.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some dialog take from episode 1x04.  
> Beta'ing by dangerous Sith Lord Darthmelyanna.


	5. Chapter 5

When Belle was a child, she hung a map on her bedroom wall. She spent hours gazing at it, dreaming of the far off wonders sure to be found in places like Camelot, DunBroch, Arendelle and Agraba. Whenever she ventured beyond her father’s borders, she celebrated her homecoming by pinning a little flag on her map, marking where she had been. Should she ever return to Sir Maurice’s castle, Belle would make sure she added flags. A flag for the Dark Castle, another for Prince Thomas’s palace. A flag for the village where she found a dwarf tavern and another for where she broke the curse on Prince Phillip.

Belle liked geography. To picture the places depicted on a map ignited her imagination as surely as any novel. It satisfied her yearning to know more about the world just as well as an index or an encyclopedia.

Yet, no matter how many times she reminded herself that she _liked_ geography and had spent many happy hours pouring over maps as a child, Belle found herself utterly incapable of concentrating on the maps spread out before her.

Just as humans lived on the land and mermaids swam in the sea, the sky was home to giants. Their fields and palaces were in the clouds. Their settlements moved with the wind and rain. Topographers tasked with depicting the geography of giants were forced to determine the means to show transition. From a human perspective, giants were forever in flux. They had withdrawn from trade agreements with humans long ago, but the rumors that the settlements still existed persisted. If giants still lived above them, then the hope of another magic bean finding its way down to the ground was not in vain.

Belle sighed. When had she become such a silly romantic? The maps laid out on the library tables were fascinating—so different from how human countries were depicted, their natural landmarks nothing like mountains or rivers. And yet, Belle could hardly focus on them for a moment before her mind would wander right back to Rumple.

Thoughts of him were hardly new. Belle had a fine catalogue of Rumple-based fantasies, ranging from the action-packed fancies of her early confinement (where she bested him and escaped) to the foolishly romantic (where he pledged his eternal love, invented long before she knew what that truly entailed) to the ones that would make her blush scarlet should she suspect his ability to know when he was wanted extended so far (where she bared herself for his mouth and his hands and his…). She also had plenty of reality-based Rumple musings. Little questions bubbling about his travels or making sure his tea was just right or snickering to herself when out of nowhere, she remembered a little joke he had made.

Belle wasn’t sure which was more ridiculous: being so distracted by her thoughts that she couldn’t concentrate or being so enraptured by a wizard she could summon to her side at any moment and simply choosing not to.

It wasn’t like she was getting anything accomplished anyway.

“Rumple?”

An explicit summons was no time for walking. He appeared in a flourish of smoke, a smile that was both sly and pleased adorning his face. “Yes?”

Belle grinned. “I hope you don’t mind. I just wanted to see you.”

Rumple bowed low, his arms flung wide. “And now you have.” Cheeky. “Does my lady require anything else?”

He knew she did. He could feel the tug of want in her heart. “Actually, I have a question.”

His eyebrows quirked. “A question that cannot be answered by your books? What a special occasion.” Rumple flicked his wrist, causing the billowing sleeves of his shirt to shake. “I wish I had known; I’d have dressed for it.”

Belle rolled her eyes. Far be it from her to request he dress more formally. She appreciated that he didn’t bother himself with his coats and cravats when it was just the two of them. Although… Her eyes narrowed. Belle had sequestered herself in the library to study maps of giant settlements without any idea of what he was up to. She beckoned him to her side at a whim, insensible of if he had been doing anything important. “You aren’t upset that I summoned you, are you?”

“You’re not terrible company.”

“You know, you don’t have to answer me. If you were busy, I’d understand.”

Rumple’s gaze shifted away from her. His previous playfulness seemed to vanish. Eyes fixed on the bookshelves, he said, “Kind of you to give me permission, my dear, but I think it better if I don’t.”

“I wouldn’t want to keep you from anything.”

He clasped his hands in front of him. “If you truly needed something and I ignored you…” Rumple cleared his throat. Then, too nonchalant, he added, “Well, that doesn’t bear thinking about, now does it?”

_Oh._

He was probably just paranoid.

He had sent her to a ball alone. If he suspected enemies making threats against her, he wouldn’t have done that.

But, maybe she was misunderstanding him. There was no reason to assume he meant anything dire. There was an air of nervousness about him, but there always was. Belle had never caught him feeling comfortable in his own skin. He probably just didn’t want her to think herself neglected.

Belle ignored her own sudden restlessness. “About my question,” she prompted primly.

“You already asked one.”

“I have another.”

Rumple sighed, making himself out as though he felt quite put upon. “Yes, yes, out with it.”

Belle licked her lips. “I’ve been thinking about what you said about Ella and Prince Thomas. How you said you had a sense they were True Love before they’d met. Did you know I would fall in love with you? Is that why you brought me here?”

The color drained from his grey-gold skin. His jaw seemed to move independently of his brain and it took him some time to regain control. “I—I didn’t know. I _should_ have. I didn’t.”

He should have known? Belle giggled. Since when was Rumple so confident about his appeal?

“If—if I _had_ known,” he continued, his eyes never flickering towards her, “I wouldn’t have...well. There are a lot of things I wouldn’t have done.”

She smirked. “Such as lock me in a dungeon?”

Rumple turned to face her, shock all over his face. “I wouldn’t have brought you here at all!” The way those words rammed into her heart must have been displayed on her face, because he hasted to add, “Not that it would have made a difference!”

Belle swallowed. “I don’t understand.”

He clicked his tongue. “One’s fate is what it is,” Rumple said. “You can fight it if you like, but in the end, you’ll never change it.”

_“I_ decide my fate.”

“You make your choices,” he argued, “as everyone around you makes theirs. In the grand scheme of things, one choice rarely makes an impact.”

“But day to day choices being small isn’t what you were talking about. You said I was _fated_ to fall in love with you.”

“Yes.” He shrugged. “It’s True Love, sweetheart, that’s how it works. It chooses us, we don’t choose it.”

Belle’s eyes narrowed. What sort of person didn’t choose love? “And you’re saying if you had _known_ that, you would have, what, _avoided_ me?”

She suspected he nearly quailed, but his pride rallied. Instead, Rumple gave her a dangerous, toothy smile. “I’m a difficult man to love.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“You, uh, may have also noticed the litany of grievances you ought to hold against me. Aforementioned dungeon included.”

Belle pursed her lips. “You’re a difficult _person,”_ she conceded. “But that’s because you’ve been hurt. You’ve lost so much and been alone so long. I don’t think you remember how to let anyone in. I can tell you’re _trying,_ though. You can trust me. I won’t pull back.”

Rumple shook his head. “After the things I’ve done? You should.”

“You’re _cursed.”_

He wrinkled his nose. “Not so much the mitigating factor when you _choose_ to be cursed.”

“To find your son!” she cried. “You’re sacrificing your own soul to be reunited with him. That’s noble.”

“Again,” Rumple said, sad and resigned, “not so much the mitigating factor when I lost him in the first place.”

Belle reached for him, cupping Rumple’s face in her palms. “I love you. I know you’re a much better, stronger and more noble person than you let on. And I know that Bae will see it, too, when we find him.”

His hands came up to lightly encircle her wrists. His thumbs swept across the back of her hands. The pads of his fingers found the sensitive skin on the inside of her wrist. Belle shivered. Rumple said, “I don’t know what you see in me.”

She smiled. “Says the man who should have known I would fall in love with him? You know what I see.”

Rumple plucked her hands from his face, but did not relinquish his grip. “That’s something else.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I have the ability to see the future.”

Her heart was so full it pushed all the air from her lungs. “You _saw_ us! Together! In the future?”

“I saw _you,”_ Rumple replied. “Seeing the future...it’s not as useful as it sounds. It’s difficult to read and never what you think. There are always details you wish you’d known.”

“And in this case,” Belle surmised, “the detail you wished you’d known is that we would fall in love.”

Rumple’s head bobbed in agreement. “You have to admit that would have been helpful. When I saw you in your father’s war room, I recognized you and figured, what the hell. I don’t like leaving things up to chance. Might as well scoop her up now. Figure out her significance before I need her.”

“And if I had said no?”

“You were the one that wanted that deal. You would have given me anything I asked for.”

Belle couldn’t deny it. Still… “You said fate is what it is. What would have happened if I said no?”

“Then this,” he dropped her hands to gesture to the space between them, “would have happened another way. But it still would have happened.”

Belle wasn’t sure how she felt about these revelations. There was a certain security to the idea that she was fated to be with Rumple. She hadn’t entertained many doubts about her choice, but it was nice to know the gods or the universe or whatever force decided fate had come to the same conclusion she did about who she ought be with. And this unknown force that decided fate—how much of a say did it have? Was she a puppet, or her own person?

She had an urge to press her mouth to his and watch his curse flee from the strength and truth of her feelings. She wanted to run up to the laboratory and swirl the potion he made from their hair.

And Rumple! Had he known what fate had in store for him, he would have fought. He seemed entirely confident that fate always won, and he would have railed against it anyway.

“You are upset.” Rumple stepped back.

Belle wrapped her arms around her middle, cold and lonely without being physically tethered to him. “I don’t like feeling like I never had a choice.”

Rumple scoffed. “No one ever has a choice about how they feel. Stay or run—that’s the choice.”

It didn’t make her feel better. “You chose run.”

“It didn’t stick.”

She chose stay. Belle chose to nurture her love. She chose to carefully guard it like the precious thing it was, to fight for its every chance at growing. Maybe to love him or not wasn’t up to her. Maybe her heart was always destined to be his. What to _do_ once she fell in love—that was when she had a choice.

Belle chose _stay,_ and it stuck.

Her determination to be true to her feelings was stronger than his fear of getting hurt. She chose _Rumple._ She would always choose Rumple.

Belle reached for his hands. “Do you know why I wanted to make a deal with you?”

He cocked his head. “Something about _help, help, we’re dying?”_

“But why you, specifically?”

“Lots of people call on me, sweetheart.” He shrugged. “I don’t worry about their motives. They have a problem. They think I can fix it. _I can!_ For a price.”

Belle exhaled. Sweetly, she sang, “I am trying to tell you something.”

“That’ll teach me to answer your questions.”

She dropped one of his hands to swat him on the arm. “Hush. Listen. When the ogres first breached the castle walls, they killed my mother. She died to protect me.”

That appeared to be enough explanation for him. Belle had been willing to sacrifice anything to end the war, her desperation shaped by what she had already lost. She didn’t fault Rumple for assuming that was the story she wanted to tell. It was certainly an important one. But she was thinking of a very different tale.

“I couldn’t remember how it happened,” Belle continued. Rumple shifted their hold on each other, cupping her elbows in his palms, his fingers drawing reassuring circles on her arms. “But I knew from my reading that there are trolls capable of restoring memories in Arendelle. So I traveled there.”

Rumple raised his eyebrows.

“While I was there, I met this woman—Anna.”

He swallowed. “Did you?”

“Mm-hm. She knew the trolls and helped me find them. While we were climbing—that’s how you get to the trolls, you have to climb up this mountain—a box fell out of her bag. She said she stole it from sorcerer.”

The whisper of a strangled laugh escaped him. “Did she?”

“Anyway, after...everything, when I was on my way back home, I started thinking about magic and sorcerers. My father thought an alliance with Gaston’s duchy would provide us with enough soldiers to hold the ogres at bay, but I knew it didn’t matter how many men we had. We needed something stronger.” She licked her lips. “We needed _magic.”_

“So you researched your local sorcerers.” Rumple appeared to have realized the point behind her tale. “And you chose me.”

Belle leaned towards him and rubbed her nose against his cheek. “I _liked_ you,” she whispered. He swallowed so hard she could _hear_ him. “Did you know the first appearance of _Rumplestiltskin_ in the historical record is the time you saved an entire battlefield of child soldiers from ogres and led them home?”

Rumple pulled her body flush against him, one hand cradling the back of her neck, his other arm slung low around her hips.

“You,” Belle said, wrapping her arms around his waist, “are better, stronger and more noble than you let on. You think you have this great and terrible reputation, but history doesn’t forget who you really are.” She laid her head on his shoulder. “And maybe you’re not the only one who could have guessed this is how we’d end up.”

“You wanted me,” he asked, wondering, searching, “from the very beginning?”

Belle shook with laughter. “Not during the dungeon part. But before that? When you were my fantasy? And after that? When you let me _know_ you?” She exhaled. “Yeah.”

He moaned softly. She felt it reverberate through his body, pressed against hers. “I’m going to know every inch of you.”

A promise of that nature, and suddenly clinging to him as she was felt untenable. As long as they were in a land with magic, they were at an impasse. Belle withdrew from the hug and blushing, went back to her maps.

Her concentration had not improved one jot.

Rumple cleared his throat. “Just out of, ah, curiosity, whatever became of this Anna girl?”

Belle frowned at her maps. “I—I don’t know. There was...family trouble.”

“Shame.”

* * *

Thinking about what she wanted proved to be curiously difficult. Ever since Rumple told her about Baelfire, the reunion between father and son had been Belle’s first priority. Three decades of putting someone she had never met before her own aspirations was a difficult habit to break. But it wasn’t just that. The curse had written frustrated inertia into Jean O’Hara and even awake, she found it hard to shake.

In her mind, everything still came back to Rumple and Bae.

She couldn’t fault Rumple for putting his son before other people. He was Bae’s father. He should. But as an observing party one step closer to neutral, Jean couldn’t condone Rumple’s actions.

He had lost Bae due to his own bad choices. For untold years, he had suffered. There was a raw, bleeding hole in Rumple’s soul that could not begin to heal until he saw his son again. Bae had been forced to make his way in this world alone, only a child. In the Enchanted Forest, they could not anticipate what the Land Without Magic would be like. They had arrived here twenty-eight years ago, the curse adapting them to innumerable challenges of this strange world. Bae would have arrived with no money, no skills, no documentation, and no one to support him or care for him. Where could he have turned? There was no telling what Bae had been forced to do to survive this world or the toll it took on him.

It was a tragedy. For both of their sakes’, a reunion was necessary. But that did not give Rumple the right to tear apart other families. Charming and Snow were innocents. Rumple lost his son himself; Emma had been stolen. When the curse broke, there would be no newborn waiting. Charming and Snow would get grown-up, perpetually wary, walls up loner Emma Swan. What kind of relationship would they be able to have? They were the same age!

For that matter, when Gold found Bae, how old would _he_ be?

Jean knew the first time _Rumplestiltskin_ appeared in the historical record. It was some two hundred years before her own birth. Bae had disappeared around that time. The Dark One was immortal, but there was nothing to suggest his child would be. After centuries had passed, it should have been ludicrous to suppose Bae was still out there, able to be found. But Rumple knew of a prophecy that he would find his son. Rumple had lived too long to believe in much anymore, but he clung to the idea of _fate_ with both hands.

Jean also knew that prophecies were misleading and the future wasn’t what anyone wanted it to be. In the end, what he found might be a grave. If he were very lucky, Gold would find an Emma Swan of his own somehow—Bae still miraculously alive, an adult with walls made of brick, carved from betrayal and hardship.

But that would be his own doing. Rumple knew he had hurt Bae. It had been Belle who thought a joyful reunion possible, not him. Gold would gladly accept Bae’s hate if it meant his boy spoke to him while cursing his name.

Charming and Snow were innocent.

So Jean tried to think about her own life, and what to do when she wasn’t sitting idly by, entertaining romantic daydreams about a man who was off ruining the lives of other people on the off-chance it might work out in his favor.

She should have stopped him, somehow.

She should have known what he was up to, and stopped him.

(She should stop blaming herself because she was never in control of anyone’s choices but her own.) But she should have stopped him. Surely, if anyone could have, it would have been Belle.

She had to stop making this about Belle.

They had never had any intention of returning to the Enchanted Forest. The plan was to live out the rest of their lives here. Find Bae. Get married. Have a family. In this world, there would be no curses robbing them of their chances at happiness, no magic threatening them. Just love.

If she was going to think about what she wanted, she had to think about what she wanted for _Jean._ She sat at the kitchen table with a cup of cocoa (no cinnamon) and a pad. Aspirations for Jean O’Hara were curiously difficult to come by.

When Emma came home that evening, the list read:

  * Reunite with Father
  * See the world
  * Go back to school



Jean’s pen hovered by the fourth bullet point. She simultaneously felt like she did and did not have another item to add.

Emma helped herself to the box of cocoa mix left on the counter. (Before Emma, Jean had always been a tea drinker, but she felt _off_ tea at the moment.) “What’s up?”

“I’m thinking about what I want to do with my life,” Jean answered. “I haven’t thought about what I want in way too long.”

The kettle was still warm from when Jean made her cocoa. It started whistling almost immediately. “If it helps,” Emma said, pouring water into her mug, “Henry would blame the curse.”

“Right.” Jean nodded. “I’m stuck in a dead-end life with a job I hate because of the curse.” It didn’t help. The truth stung. (That treacherous voice in her head started whispering again. She should have stopped him.)

Emma added whipped cream and cinnamon to her mug and swung herself into a chair. “So, what’s on the list?”

Jean slid the pad across the table.

“Well,” Emma said, “you’ve already traveled more than most people, so that’s something.”

“What do you mean?”

Emma raised an eyebrow. “I mean, you’re from where, Australia? And you live in Maine. Most people can’t say they’ve moved across the world.”

“I haven’t seen very much of North America.” Or any of Australia.

Emma sipped her cocoa and conceded that there was a lot to see. Her own life had been transient, but at least she could honestly say she had passed through a lot of the United States. From her tone, Jean got the impression Emma’s travels had little to do with the pleasure of sightseeing. The air between them grew awkward, and Emma leapt to another bullet point. “Go back to school. To get out of that job you hate?”

“Yeah. It doesn’t feel right. It’s not _me.”_

“Fell into it?”

“Pushed, more like. And once I was there…” Jean shrugged. “No matter how much I wanted to break out of the routine, it felt impossible.”

“Your dad pushed you?”

The memories provided by the curse said precisely that. Her father had urged her to go into a safe, steady line of work and Jean hadn’t been strong enough to stand up to him.

Jean O’Hara had been the type of woman who let herself get pushed around.

Feeling like a liar, Jean said, “Yeah.”

Emma leaned back. “I’m no expert, but that sounds a little extreme.”

“Huh?”

“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to,” Emma said, pushing the pad back across the table.

Jean took her pad back and abruptly realized that Emma had drawn the wrong conclusion from the first and third bullets. “Oh! No! That’s not...that’s not why we’re estranged.”

Emma’s face was carefully blank, with no appearance of curiosity or expectation. Emma had grown up in the system. She didn’t talk much about it except to assure those that asked that it sucked, but Jean was savvy enough to know vulnerability and victimization went hand and hand with children failed by social services. What conclusion could Emma’s life lead her to but the idea that Jean had been a victim?

Gold would know how to tell _just enough_ truth.

“It’s nothing like that,” Jean hurried to say. “When...when I was younger, before I lived in Storybrooke, I ran away with a guy my father hated.”

Emma nodded, her _you don’t have to spill if you’re not ready_ mask melting away. Running away with a bad boy was just as common a tale. Emma surmised, “You were in love, you thought you’d be together forever and here you are.”

“And here I am,” Jean echoed. “It’s been so long. I don’t think my father would recognize me now.”

“Well,” Emma said, “I have a lot of experience with failed relationships, so as an expert let me say, I think your dad can probably overlook this one.”

“Thanks.”

Moe French the florist would probably feel differently.

Emma didn’t expect anything, but Jean still felt like she needed to account for why she wasn’t running to the phone for a tearful call with her imaginary father in Australia. “Sometimes family trouble is more complicated than it sounds.”

Emma snorted. “I’m learning that.”

“Oh! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean”—

“Today I told Henry his father is dead.”

A million and one thoughts collided in Jean’s mind. Was Emma okay? When did it happen? Was that why she gave up Henry? “Is Henry okay?”

“He’s…” Emma’s hands flitted around her mug. “Well, the thing is, Henry’s father isn’t dead. I don’t think. I just haven’t seen the guy in ten years.”

“Oh.”

Emma sighed. “The guy was bad news. I don’t want Henry getting hurt, so when he started asking about his father, I fed him this story about his dad being dead.”

Jean’s eyes dropped to her list. “So. No reunions for them.”

“I never even told Henry’s father I was pregnant. I never had the chance. He has no idea Henry exists. Henry has no idea he exists. It’s what’s best for everyone.”

Yet another parent and child separated.

“I think you need to tell Henry the truth.”

“I’m _protecting_ him!”

“I know, but I don’t think you like lying to him. You wouldn’t have brought it up if you were okay with it. And Henry’s such a smart kid! He found you. If he goes looking for more information about his father, who knows what he’ll find. If you do the whole Henry’s Father journey together, then you can protect him. Or you might help him find someone who wants to know him.”

“I want what’s best for him and believe me, his father isn’t it.”

Jean nodded. Emma’s need to confess was not an invitation for anyone to start throwing parenting advice around. She had already given way too many unasked for opinions.

Still, Henry’s father had never been given the chance to do right by his son.

Rumple had embraced the darkest of magics for centuries in the hopes of finding his way back to Bae. When the curse broke, Charming and Snow would be at Emma’s doorstep, eager to piece their family back together as best they could. The entire town would have to shuffle and reorganize themselves back into the families they had been.

In the town that second chances built, didn’t Henry’s father deserve a _first_ chance?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dread Sith Lord Darthmelyanna was here, reading my story and rewording awkward passages.


	6. Chapter 6

That first spring, some weeks after tearing down the drapes and introducing sunlight to the Great Hall, Belle had turned her attention to the courtyard, coaxing flowers from the inert dirt. Though the library would always be her most important place, and the Hall what her mind conjured when she heard the word  _ home, _ she had love for her little garden, too. She had spent the winter bent over books and maps. Now that spring was drawing close yet again, Belle put down her research, left Rumple’s fascinating trophies from far off lands in their cases and ventured out to the courtyard to see what had survived the months of frost and snow. 

She didn’t get too far before being seized from behind. Her shriek turned into a laugh and she collapsed backwards against Rumple. He held her tight, his arms folded over her belly. Belle could feel his shoulders shake with his own laughter. They were in the laboratory now. The garden, Rumple had apparently decided, could be neglected a bit longer.

When the giggles his sudden abduction had brought were calmed, but her back was still held flush against his chest, the hard, rapid thump of his heartbeat reverberated through her body. Belle began to twist and his hold loosened enough for her to bring them nose to nose. “What are you up to?”

His golden eyes darted. The intoxicating nearness of him was something she was never permitted to enjoy for long. Belle wasn’t sure which one of them he feared would have a lapse in judgement, but in these moments where their heads tilted towards one another and their breath mingled, he could be counted on to retreat first. Rumple staggered backwards until they were an arm’s length apart. 

Fingers flicking  _ follow, _ Rumple walked to his worktable. He wasn’t brewing potions today. Her curiosity was further flamed when Belle was close enough to see maps spread out on the table. She wasn’t surprised he shared her interest in geography—the maps she’d been studying as long as she had been in the Dark Castle belonged to him, of course. “What is this about?”

Rumple stared at something she could not see. “The curse approaches. It won’t be much longer now.”

The breath was sucked from her lungs. “How long?”

“Perhaps five months. Certainly not any longer than that.”

So, his unwavering belief in  _ fate _ was to be rewarded after all. Centuries of searching had not yielded a viable alternative to the curse, but Belle had hoped fresh eyes and a new perspective might have found something. Time was short, and it appeared the curse was as inevitable as he had always claimed. 

“We must prepare.”

Belle squared her shoulders. “Right. What do you need me to do?”

Rumple jabbed the map with his forefinger. “This kingdom and this kingdom shall not be affected by the curse.”

She gasped. “That’s only two kingdoms out of dozens!”

“It’s a curse, darling, it isn’t pretty.”

“But so many lives!”

Rumple huffed. “It’s not going to  _ kill _ them.”

“But,” she sputtered, “can’t you do something? You’ve altered it before—you weakened it to make it easier to break. Can’t you weaken it some more, make it smaller?”

“No. It’s a  _ curse.” _

She crossed her arms. “So when  _ you _ want to weaken it, that’s fine, but when  _ I _ ask you to weaken it, curses can’t be weakened?”

“I have already diluted its power as much as I can. If I were to dilute it anymore, it would lose the strength it needs to cross realms and all of this would be for nothing.”

Helplessly, Belle gestured at him. “But you’re so powerful! There’s got to be more you can do.”

Rumple’s smile was grim. “Indeed I am. But as I shall not be the one to cast it, there comes a time when my power is sadly irrelevant.”

“But the only reason you aren’t casting it is a prophecy! If you cast it, then you could make it smaller?”

He sighed. “Belle, it’s not that simple.”

“You’re just stubborn!” She threw up her hands. “You’re so convinced the future is written in stone when it’s not!”

“All magic comes with a price, dear. What this curse wants me to pay, I don’t have. I can’t cast it.”

That was decidedly more reasonable than refusing to try because of something a seer said, but he was still being stubborn. “And you can’t get it? Someone has it, you can’t borrow it from them?”

“Think of it like a talisman,” Rumple said. “If you were to cast a spell on that book you always tote around with you, it would be effective because that particular book is meaningful to you. For the rest of us”—he shrugged—“it’s just a book. That which holds great significance for Regina holds none at all for me.” Rumple spread his hands. “I’m afraid it isn’t as simple as borrowing hers.”

“And you can’t get your own?”

Rumple blinked, rapidly. “No, sweetheart,” he whispered, “I can’t.”

“I just can’t believe you’re that fatalistic! This is for your son!”

“I know it is! You don’t have to remind  _ me _ of that! If I could”—Rumple shook his head. “Things would be different. But, this is where we are. This is what we have to work with. Casting the curse myself is out of the question.”

“Look.” Belle sighed. “If that’s the case, then maybe  _ no one _ should cast the curse. We can think of something else.”

“It’s too late for that. Regina won’t be deterred, not now.”

Defeated, Belle mumbled, “Right.” She straightened. “Okay. What do we need to do?”

“You have a choice to make.”

_ “Me?” _

“I know you’ve been researching realm jumping. It’s likely jumping  _ from _ the Land Without Magic is easier than jumping  _ to _ it, but once I’m there, I’m not leaving. I’m staying with my boy.”

“I know.”

Rumple jabbed the map again. “If you wish to stay in the Enchanted Forest, you will be safe here.”

“What? I’m coming with you!”

“At least think about it. I can’t promise that everyone who goes will be able to return. Coming with me means leaving behind everything you’ve ever known.”

Belle arched her eyebrow. “I’ve done that before, remember? When I promised to go with you forever?”

The brunt of his annoyance was born by the maps, which quailed not under his glare. “This isn’t about the deal.”

She rubbed his back. “I know. It’s just...I’ve left everything behind to go with you before. Why wouldn’t I now?”

Rumple turned towards her and cupped her face in his palms. “No one needs you to be the hero, Belle. You don’t have to sacrifice anything.”

“I love you.” Somehow, she couldn’t manage to raise her voice above a whisper, but her words were fierce nonetheless.

“Enough to follow me into the great unknown without knowing if you can ever come back?” He sounded incredulous.

“Yes!” Belle covered his hands with her own. “I’m not afraid, Rumple. I want to be with you. I want to have a  _ life _ with you, a real life where we can be  _ together.” _

He said nothing. His eyes moved over her face, searching, as if he didn’t quite understand.

“Is”—

Or maybe that wasn’t the problem. Could she have misread him all this time? Rumple addressed her by endearments like he was reading them off a script, but Belle had just thought he was nervous. After so many years alone, she supposed he couldn’t remember what honest affection looked like and was afraid of getting it wrong. He wanted her to be happy, didn’t he? He cared about her well-being, right? He held her like he never wished to let go, he whispered to her as if he wanted to take her to bed. She wasn’t wrong about their future. 

Was she?

“Isn’t that what you want?”

“Of course it is.”

The admission was so soft, had Belle dared to breathe, she would not have heard him.

His hands fell away. “But Bae is my son. You shouldn’t have to give up everything for my child.”

Belle took his limp hands and entwined their fingers. “I don’t have to. You’ve already shown me that I don’t have to. I am  _ choosing _ to, because I love you.”

“You have dreams, Belle.”

She laughed. “To see the world? Rumple, you are offering me a brand new world, filled with adventures we can’t possibly imagine! You make my dreams come true just being yourself.”

His lips moved, silently mouthing something she thought was ‘oh, Belle.’

She released his hands, ran her palms up his arms and around his shoulders. He licked his lips, his eyes sweeping over her. 

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Then, ah, I suppose you’ll be wanting to make things official?”

Belle tilted her head. “What are you saying?” Both she and the butterflies in her stomach were sure she knew, but oh, how she wanted him to say it.

“Will you marry me?”

“Yes!” Though she wanted nothing more than to pull Rumple close, Belle pushed him back. His eyebrows rose. “When we get there. I  _ will _ kiss you at our wedding.”

“Uh, actually, I think I get to kiss you.”

* * *

 

For all the horror they wrought, curses were a weaker magic. They were always breakable. Even when one found themselves without the means to make a clean break, the chance remained to chip away at a curse until its power was gone. No matter how many lies the Dark Curse bore into the minds and souls of its victims, the truth was stronger. Certified Loner Emma Swan did not believe that her mother was Snow White. She did not believe Snow White was a mild mannered school teacher called Mary Margaret Blanchard. And yet, they resonated with one another. 

Their connection was stronger than a curse.

Emma could justify the friendship anyway she chose. Mary Margaret was Henry’s teacher. If she wanted news of her son and Regina was being intransigent, which was often, Mary Margaret was a way to keep tabs on Henry. Mary Margaret was also blessed with a disposition that radiated such kindness and openness that the hardest heart could not fail to falter and welcome her friendship.

By virtue of being Emma’s roommate, Jean was swept into the whirlwind that was  _ Emma and Mary Margaret. _ Never in the preceding twenty-eight years had Jean been friendly, or even really acquainted, with Mary Margaret but the excesses of her nurturing spirit spilled over. Jean wasn’t able to offer much spontaneity. She was still chained to her desk during the afternoons where a school teacher and a deputy sheriff could roam around town. Lunches and walks and sudden adventures with Henry were things Jean learned about after the fact, but she found herself increasingly included when Emma and Mary Margaret made concrete plans.

It was nice. The Dark Curse hadn’t given her any friends and if Jean were honest, she was a bit of a loner herself. She liked to think of herself as gregarious, of course, but the fact remained that being locked up in a castle and only knowing one other person for the rest of her life had not  _ exactly _ struck Belle as a bad deal.  

Things like being invited to tag along with Emma for dinner at Mary Margaret’s place was the very sort of change of pace Jean needed. She needed to break out of the rut the curse had placed her in. She needed to develop many friendships instead of placing the entirety of her need for human contact on one intense, all-encompassing romance.

(Especially considering she still wasn’t speaking to him.)

They knocked on the door with a bottle of Pinot Grigio in hand. Mary Margaret answered, her smile bright and her apron adorable. The pot simmering on the stove made the entire loft warm, the smell of clam chowder welcoming and homey. A colorful bouquet of flowers sat proudly on the table. 

Mary Margaret accepted the wine. She retreated into her cooking nook for a corkscrew and three glasses. While she was distracted, Emma and Jean exchanged a glance. Judging from Emma’s expression, they had come to the same conclusion about the flowers and held wildly different feelings on the subject.

“From David?” Emma asked, coming up from behind Mary Margaret to get her glass of win. She gestured at the flowers.

Mary Margaret’s face turned as pink as her apron. She snatched a pile of bowls from the counter and marched to the table.  _ “No.” _

For a moment, Jean wasn’t sure who was going to break first, Mary Margaret or Emma—who was watching her mother with wry amusement and looked on the brink of asking for further details. 

“From Dr. Whale,” Mary Margaret said. The bowls thunked against the table as she set the places. “Who I slept with.”

Jean was sure that Mary Margaret could agree that sometimes  _ earnestness _ was its own curse. Just as Mary Margaret had not particularly wanted to make her confession but couldn’t help herself, Jean futilely wished she could ram the  _ “What?” _ that burst from her mouth back in. “I’m not judging!” she cried.

“Really?” Mary Margaret asked, the cracks in her gentle air breaking ever further. “That sounded judge-y.” She sighed and started moving napkins and spoons here and there, all the while speaking very quickly. “I don’t usually do things like that—I wasn’t sure what the protocol was, so I called him and then he sent flowers—and they’re beautiful, but it was just a one night stand.”  

“This is great,” Emma said. “You are moving on from David and that’s the important thing. Don’t worry about one night stands—one night is all I give a guy any more.”

Mary Margaret nodded firmly. “Yes. I need to move on from David. He chose Kathryn. They are married. I accept this.”

Apparently, a lot was discussed during those afternoon wanderings and coffee breaks. Bewildered, Jean said, “I think I missed something.”

Drumming her fingers on the table, Mary Margaret said, “David considered leaving Kathryn, but he decided he wanted to make his marriage work. I would never stand in the way of that.”

_ It was a curse. _

It wasn’t pretty.

It wasn’t meant to be kind to its victims.

It was supposed to transport them all to another realm. It was supposed to freeze time. It was supposed to tear families apart and strand everyone in lives that could never make them happy. 

The frozen aspect had made the rest of it too easy to justify. The harm was temporary. The mistakes you made weren’t real.

But this complication— _ this _ was different. Mary Margaret felt obliged to stand aside so that David could honor vows he had never made. Even with the curse tearing at everything they were, Snow and Charming’s bond was undeniable. In its own way, it was as strong as her bond with Emma. David had woken up from a coma and worse for her. Why couldn’t she tell True Love and a simulacrum of a marriage apart? Mary Margaret had slept with Dr. Whale not knowing who he truly was, not knowing who  _ she _ was, not knowing who she was married to! 

Time was moving again. 

People were making choices,  _ real _ choices. The mistakes and missteps were real.

“I believe love is always worth fighting for,” Jean said, finally. 

After pouring herself a fortifying glass of wine.

Henry would not hesitate to tell the truth. But just telling anyone who would listen was not making a dent in Emma’s belief. To take Mary Margaret by the shoulders and tell her everything wouldn’t change her mind. It would just make them both think Jean was crazy. 

Emma’s eyebrows rose. “I assume you refer to David and Kathryn.”

Caught. Drat. For all her lack of belief, the Savior was perceptive. “Love,” Jean said again, “is always worth fighting for. Love requires us to be brave and strong and open ourselves up to being hurt.” She fingered the stem of her glass. “But it doesn’t always  _ last. _ No one should be in a relationship where they are left wondering if their partner still loves them. I just worry that David and Kathryn are doing what they think they  _ should _ instead of following their _ hearts.” _

“Hey,” Emma protested, “they’ve been through a lot. Cut them some slack.”

Jean nodded. “Isn’t asking questions  _ normal _ after something so big? They both need time to decide what they want to fight for.” She drained half her glass. “That’s all I meant.”

Heavy, uncertain silence settled over the loft. “Emma!” Mary Margaret cried, “Tell us about you and Graham!”

Emma sputtered. “There is no me and Graham! We are professional work colleagues and not a human resources nightmare!”

“I think you just don’t want to let yourself be vulnerable.” Mary Margaret spoke with a teasing, but restrained glee that was probably born from her own love life no longer being the topic put under a microscope. “You keep your walls up to stop you from getting hurt, but they also stop you from finding happiness.”

Mary Margaret probably had a point. Emma Swan didn’t do vulnerable, but that was a blessing for a Savior. As it stood, her only known weakness was Henry and he was safe from the queen. Should Emma open herself up to Graham, she would be giving Regina a means to strike back.

“No,” Emma insisted. “I have enough to deal with with Regina, and Regina and Henry, and Regina and Graham, and Regina and my job. Graham is the last thing in the world I am thinking about.”

“You seem very sure about that,” Mary Margaret said, practically singing that she thought Emma was anything but.

“And you are reading too much into this. But you aren’t the only one who can change a subject. Jean, tell us about your love life.”

“Um.”  _ ‘I was engaged to a maniacal sorcerer but ended things because he neglected to mention  _ an abundance _ of baby-stealing’  _ was not the sort of answer Emma was looking for. Henry would have appreciated it.

Had she ended things?

When Gold arrived at her doorstep with a gash on his head, her heart had cried out for him, much as she couldn’t stomach listening to any of his justifications just then. “Prognosis hazy. Ask again later.”  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Darth Melyanna remains on beta duty or as I like to call it, "distracting her from doing her own writing."


	7. Chapter 7

The Dark One was not a patient man. Plans came to fruition according to their necessary time tables, but the deals made outside of his long game came with expectations of immediacy. Whether he was to act now or be paid now or both depended on the specifications of the deal, but he did not sit idly by and wait while his mark took their time.

Belle had left her father’s home with nothing but the clothes on her back and whatever she could grab as Rumplestiltskin ushered her out. Had she not brought  _ Her Handsome Hero _ into the war room that day, she would have been forced to leave it behind. When his attempts to frighten her had lost their humor, Rumple proved to be generous with his resources. She would have been able to get another copy, eventually. It had been one of the most popular books in the realm for the past fifty years at least—it would have been an easy book for him to find, had she needed him to look. But, the morning of his arrival, Belle had been particularly missing her mother. She had walked into the war room hugging the precious book to her chest and managed to sneak it out when she left. 

Rumple knew it was her favorite. Even if he had not been fascinated by the mouthy noblewoman he had acquired, he couldn’t have missed it. Before he gave her the library, it was the only thing she had to read. By the time the first month was over, Belle must have reread it half a dozen times. He had noticed and mocked her relentlessly. The delicate little brain of a princess would be rotted through by trashy romance novels. (She wasn’t a princess, the book wasn’t trashy or a romance or even a novel, but distinctions only mattered to him when they were useful and those were not.)

There were more books than she could read in three lifetimes in the library. Belle still flipped through  _ Her Handsome Hero,  _ regularly reliving cherished passages, but for the most part, it had been left to collect dust on her bedside table. She would always come home to her lifelong favorite, but the library promised untold adventures and knowledge. 

When Belle noticed it was missing, it was with the not-as-unsettling-as-it-should-have-been awareness that she could not actually remember the last time she saw it. Perhaps a week ago. Perhaps a bit longer. Losing the book would have horrified Belle months ago, but her reactions had lost the visceral edge they had had when her mother’s sacrifice was fresh. The Dark Castle was a big place, but she knew her own habits well. She may have left it in the window seat or the Great Hall or accidentally shelved it in the library, but Belle knew she would come across it soon enough. 

Even still, she was surprised when, about a week after she first noticed it was gone, Rumple dropped her missing book into her lap. “You found it!” Belle hadn’t mentioned to him that she lost it.

“I  _ read _ it,” he corrected. Rumple sounded oddly affronted. “It’s trite nonsense. I read it again. Maybe I missed something? No. Still trite nonsense.”

Although Belle could see he really  _ was _ annoyed, she found the degree to which the book had offended him rather ridiculous. “Rumple, they’re  _ children’s _ stories. That book is special to me because my mother read it to me when I was a little girl. If you read it to Bae when he was six or seven, what would he have thought?”

The change of perspective left Rumple thunderstruck. “Bae would have  _ loved _ that book.”

Was there a child in all the realm that didn’t? “And  _ you,” _ Belle said, “would have loved it because  _ he _ loved it. Can’t you picture you and Bae reading one of the stories together? And then talking about Gideon and Agatha’s latest adventure?”  

His eyes took on a hooded, heartbroken look. Belle was suddenly very sure that Rumple could easily picture reading stories to his son, could imagine all the things Bae might have wished to say about them. And then he whispered, “Bae would have drawn pictures of them.”

When Belle was a little girl, she had drawn pictures of Gideon, Agatha and the prince, too. The yearning in Rumple’s voice told a different story, though. All children drew pictures.  _ Bae _ had been an artist. “Do you have any of his drawings?” Gently, Belle said, “I would love to see them.”

Rumple tapped his fingers against his thigh. “I have a picture of him that his mother drew—he got his talent from her. I don’t have any of his drawings.”

With that, Rumple had exceeded his willingness to share painful personal information. He sneered at the book and announced, “Another ridiculous thing about that book is the final story.”

Belle gaped. “The final story is the best one!”

“The entire book is about Gideon, yet he is suddenly absent.”

“The book,” she said, too possibly too pointedly, “is really about  _ Agatha.  _ She’s the most dynamic character. She’s the one that changes and grows. The final story, when she has an adventure on her own, is what the entire book has been leading up to!”

“And they don’t even end up together!”

Rumple’s mercurial moods were rarely mysterious to her, but this time Belle had to wonder if he legitimately had failed to pick up on the characters’ relationships as he read or if he was just trying to bother her. “Gideon is Agatha’s mentor. It would be completely inappropriate for them to end up together. Her love interest is the prince.”

“Oh! Yes!  _ The prince! _ Who the author did not bother to  _ name.” _

That settled it. Rumple was definitely trying to get her goat. 

It was working. 

“You are free to not like a book of children’s adventure stories, but you can’t claim the prince in disguise isn’t a great character because his name isn’t given.”

“You think he’s great? He spends half the book lying to them!”

“I think he’s a great  _ character.  _ The prince is in less than half of the stories. He’s in a different disguise every time he appears, but the reader can still get a good idea of who he really is.”

Rumple scoffed.

“And anyway, Agatha learns who he is and how to recognize him in the third story. And that’s important because her journey has so much to do with her preconceptions. This way, she gets to know the prince for who he is and not what his rank would have her believe.”

With a huff, Rumple said, “This book is about fighting giant spiders and raiding floating castles. You’re acting like it’s much more complex than it is.”

Belle opened the book and flipped to the first story. “Look. See how Agatha acts when she first becomes Gideon’s squire? She thinks she needs to be ruthless and never admit to weakness. She has this idea in her mind of what a knight should be, and she tries to live up to that. It’s a preconception.”

“Here,” Belle turned to the first fight scene, “Gideon turns out to be completely different. He’s not what she expects at all. He believes in solving problems with compassion, forgiveness and understanding. He shows Agatha that the bad acts of their enemies come from places of pain and that by  _ understanding _ that pain, he can save everyone.”

She turned to the last story in the collection. “But here, when Agatha is a knight in her own right and has her first adventure without Gideon, she’s so different. Gideon has taught her  _ true heroism. _ She’s overcome her own anger and pain and is able to see the pain of other people.”

Belle held the advantage in any debate on  _ Her Handsome Hero. _ She had spent most of her life thinking about the characters off and on. Rumple was out of his depth and seemed to have realized it, but he still wanted to win somehow. “You dressed up as Agatha as a kid all the time, didn’t you?”

“No!” She squared her shoulders. Without embarrassment, she admitted, “I wanted to be Gideon!”

Rumple was puzzled. “Your favorite story is the one he’s not even in.”

“It’s my favorite part because I’m proud of Agatha, like I know Gideon is. She’s come so far.” Belle smirked. “Don’t you think Bae would have been proud of her, too?”

The smile Rumple offered was crooked. “He would have. He would have loved the book, he’d have noticed all the little details and cared about all the lessons. He was a good boy. He was brave and he believed in doing the right thing.”

Belle reached out and took Rumple’s hand. “And you’re going to find him.”

“I know. That’s why I read your book.”

“What?”

Rumple waved his hand. “It’ll probably make sense later.” 

* * *

The bell jangled as she slipped into the shop. Mr. Gold’s pawnshop was not a popular destination among the citizens of Storybrooke. Before she woke from the curse, the unaware Jean had rarely come by. There were a few trinkets in her apartment that she had purchased over the years. During tax season, it was her policy that clients must come to her office to review and sign their returns once she had finished, but she remembered a few years where Mr. Gold had not been able to work it into his schedule and asked that she drop it off at the shop instead. It was hard to say how many, if any, of these occasions had actually happened or if Regina had just wanted to give Jean memories of being irritated by Gold’s assurance that the rules did not apply to him. He wasn’t a man her false self would have dared anger. Jean had swallowed her pride and done as he asked. Assuming, of course, that any of it had been real.

The shop itself was vaguely reminiscent of the Dark Castle. Most of Rumplestiltskin’s collection had been crammed into one small storefront, interspersed with items native to the Land Without Magic. Those horrible puppets from the Great Hall were here, but so was a Mickey Mouse telephone. It was an odd mixture of the old and the new, the unwelcoming and the hospitable. The display cases were crowded, the counters piled high with items. Dimly lit and overwhelming, the store itself did not lend to browsing. But she knew Mr. Gold was affable when someone did come to buy something. The tea set near the register was not for sale; he drank tea throughout the day, same as always, and he’d offer a cup to customers.

Gold himself emerged from the back room at the sound of the bell, his stride breaking momentarily when he saw her. Had Jean not been so familiar with the way Rumple used to move, seeking him out beneath the steady intensity of Mr. Gold, she probably would have missed his hesitation. He recovered himself well, but she had the advantage of knowing his uncertainty.

“Miss O’Hara.”

“Hi.”

“What can I do for you?”

“I, um”—she came prepared with an excuse and held up a folder— “I noticed some irregularities in your account. I was hoping we could go over them?”

He gestured to the curtained doorway that separated the back room from the front of the shop. “Step into my office.”

Jean strode into the back room with a confidence she didn’t quite feel. She had wanted to do this in his space, to give him control over the encounter in the hopes that it would be easier for everyone that way, but he was cool and impersonal and that made her uneasy.

She had never been in his office before. The back room was much like the front, the only real difference being the lack of display cases. The walls were lined by shelves full of inventory. Like the front, some things she recognized from the Dark Castle and some things were from this world. His laboratory work table was here, but instead of smoking potions, Mr. Gold had the innards of a pocketwatch spread out.

“Why are you really here?”

Jean licked her lips. Gold was suspicious of her motives and she supposed she had earned that. When he had wanted to talk, she had refused to listen. What reason had she to think he was still willing to talk? His potion collection wasn’t back here. She wished it was. The golden potion labeled with a heart would make her feel better.

“I wanted to talk.”

Gold gripped his cane with both hands, one over the other. “What is there left to discuss?” He squared his jaw, then smiled. “Let me assure you, dearie, I have always known it was only a matter of time before you realized you wanted more than a crippled old monster. I  _ had _ hoped you would reach that conclusion before leaving the Enchanted Forest, but here we are.”

His lack of faith stung. Another time, she would have attributed it to his maddening disbelief he could be loved, but this time it was certainly her fault. She had made no promises to return to him, even if all the other times she had done just that should have suggested it was inevitable. 

Even if the golden potion and fate said what they had was True Love. 

“You’re not a monster.”

Gold chuckled, quiet and mocking. “Aren’t I? Terrorizing poor pregnant women for no reason?”

He had never been a man of great emotional fortitude. He was afraid of being hurt. He ran at the first sign of trouble. He was only trying to protect himself. Jean took a deep breath. She laid her folder down on the work table, careful not to dislodge any of his tiny, precisely arranged watch pieces.

“I was angry,” she admitted. “And I didn’t want to listen. I was scared that if I did, I would let you trick me into not seeing what was right in front of me.”

“And now?”

“And now I’ve done some thinking.” She sank onto the cot. Gold remained where he stood. “I thought about what I wanted out of life. I made a list. I didn’t put you on it.”

He turned away.

“I wanted to. I wrote a bullet point and I just couldn’t. Or maybe I thought I shouldn’t. And then Emma came in.”

She heard him whisper the Savior’s name, a hard stop in the middle. Em. Ma. 

“She told me that she lied to Henry about his father and it made me so mad. It made me think of you, and how hard a father fights for his child. Henry’s father hurt her, but he deserves a chance to  _ try _ to be better, doesn’t he?”

“It’s really none of your business, dearie.”

“No.” Her fingers plucked at the blanket. “I guess I just think people deserve a second chance, and that’s not going to change.”

“My, aren’t you noble?”

At least he hadn’t called her  _ dearie _ again. “Mary Margaret gave up on David.”

“Yes.” Gold sounded vexed. “His curse memories have asserted themselves. Did you really come here to gossip?”

“I came here because I believe that love should be fought for and that people deserve another chance. So give  _ me _ one. Please. I didn’t want to listen before. I will now.”

Gold turned around sharply. “What are you saying?”

“You said you could explain. So, explain.”

He sat down next to her. It was start.

“The truth is,” Gold took a deep breath, “I have no idea what happened to Miss Swan.”

Of all the explanations Mr. Gold’s silver tongue could provide, ignorance was not one Jean had considered. He was too smart, too adept at weaving specifications. He left nothing to chance. “I don’t understand.”

“I had foreseen the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming would be the one to break the curse. I even saw swans. I put her parents’ love on the parchment to assist her. But to wake myself from the curse, I needed to know her name.

Jean nodded. “That’s why you imprisoned yourself.” His explanation at the time had been different, but she could see now that he had been telling a literal truth even then.

“As long as they believed they held the advantage, they were willing to trade for her name.”

“What did Snow and Charming want from you?”

“The means to stop the curse, of course.”

“But that was Emma.”

“Precisely. I told them they must get her to safety.”

And there lay the crux of Rumple’s ignorance. “But they didn’t. They abandoned her.”

“Indeed. I’m afraid I cannot account for that choice. My doing, it most certainly was  _ not.” _

She had been blaming him for something that was not his fault. Left him and broke his heart over a misunderstanding. Jean thought she might vomit, but instead she began to cry. 

After a moment of hesitation, Gold put an arm around her shoulders and drew Jean against his side. He pressed a handkerchief into her hand. When her sniffles calmed, she mopped her face with it. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry. It’ll wash well.”

“I’m sorry for not believing in you. I should have known better.” He had made the contract with Ella only to make himself appear threatening enough that they would jail him. In the Enchanted Forest, Belle had known that, uncomfortable as she was with the idea. Rumple had been firm it was the only way to learn the Savior’s identity. The contract for Ella’s baby, though it was made with a different end goal in mind, was not unique. He had dealt for babies before, carted them away from crying parents. Belle had been the one to care for the babies until he used them. Bringing them home once he was finished fell to her, too. Rumple made a point to never learn their names and hide from the reunions. That Gold was continuing to badger Ashley, years after that deal had yielded what he wanted, had made it so, so easy to see Emma and believe she was another baby caught in his web.

Jean should have known better.

He did so much just to learn Emma’s  _ name. _

“You have believed better of me than anyone else ever has, or should.”

“Can you forgive me?”

He murmured, “Of course I can,” and gently slipped the handkerchief from her hand. Gold dabbed at the wetness on her cheeks with a reverence that only made more spill. His other hand cupped the back of her head, holding her steady for his ministrations. 

His eyes were brown here.

His eyes were brown and he didn’t back away from her. She watched his eyes as they roamed over her face. The handkerchief fell from his fingers, leaving only bare skin against her cheek. Those brown eyes closed and he kissed her.

The first brush of his mouth was gentle and uncertain, not so different from that first kiss so long ago. Except, he did not pull away, confused and unable to account for what he was feeling. No, Gold drew her closer, his trembling hands directing the tilt of her head and his tongue begging entry into her mouth.

He surrounded her in every possible way. His arms held her fast against his body. His hair was fine as water in her fingers. Everything. Everywhere. Tea lingered on his breath. The sharp subtle scent of his cologne. She couldn’t hear him moan, could hear only her own pounding heart, but she felt his moans as he passed every shudder and shake of his own emotion into her.

For years, they had kept a wall carefully erected between them. Touching was a risk, kissing forbidden. Those walls were gone now, crumbled to dust. To resist him ever again was surely impossible.  

She didn’t even register the sound of the bell until Gold tore his lips from Jean and barked, “We’re closed!”

“This will only take a moment, Mr. Gold.”

Jean and Gold drew away from one another in horror. Frantically, she finger combed his hair back in place—scarcely able to believe that she had been the one to muss it—as he straightened his jacket. “Wait here,” he whispered. “I’ll get rid of her.”

Cane in hand, Gold sauntered to the front of the shop. Jean cringed in the back room, grateful for the curtain that hid her from view. 

“Madam Mayor. What can I do for you?”

“I was hoping to have a little talk.”

“This is a place of business,” Gold replied. “If you aren’t going to buy anything, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

Jean pictured a fake smile plastered on the queen’s mouth. “This will only take a moment.”

“A moment I did not give you. Leave.  _ Please.” _

Jean didn’t hear another word from Regina. The bell chimed again. It wasn’t until Gold reappeared in the back room that she let out a sigh of relief. “Looks like we still can’t let ourselves get carried away.”

“It appears not.”

Jean took a deep breath and pressed her hand to her belly, willing her nerves to calm. “I should go.”

“Wait. She didn’t see you here. For you to leave immediately after she does would be suspicious.”

“Right.” Jean made a face. “I’m bad at this.”

“All you need to do is trust me,” Gold promised. “I know what I’m doing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter came hot on the heels of the last one because I blocked the EF scene really early on and it just kept getting pushed back. But now it has arrived! 
> 
> This chapter was cold read by ramurphy2005, beta'd by Darth Melyanna AND had additional input by FeliceB.


	8. Chapter 8

So vast was the Dark Castle that it held innumerable secrets. Tasked for so long with keeping the castle clean, Belle had uncovered and claimed many nooks and alcoves for her own use. She built cosy corners to read in and dark closets to dry flowers. But no matter how many places she might call her own in the castle, she was drawn back to the Great Hall again and again. Any afternoon where Rumple sat at his spinning wheel was one where Belle wished to curl up on a settee beneath the tall windows to read. The rhythmic creak of his wheel was a warm reminder of his presence, unobtrusive enough that she wasn’t distracted from her book.

Rumple had picked a particularly fine day to stay home and spin. There was not a cloud in the sky. Bright sunlight streamed through the window. The shadow that fell over the page was quite unexpected. Belle frowned and looked out the window.

In the distance, beyond the castle walls, a thick column of dark smoke was wafting upwards, marring the sky and blocking the sun. Belle slammed her book shut. “Rumple!”

The drive wheel stopped. Rumple turned to look over his shoulder.

Gesturing, Belle said, “Come look at this.”

He laid the wool down and sauntered to the window. Rumple peered out for a moment, shrugged and made to go back to his wheel. “Fire in town, by the looks of it.”

“Aren’t you going to do anything?”

Rumple dropped back onto his stool, shook out his wrists and took up his wool. “No.”

Belle planted her fists on her hips. “You know, there is such a thing as vertical patronage.”

Humming, Rumple fed some straw into the wheel. “Is there?” Though a question, his words were marked with quiet disinterest.

She marched to the wheel. “As far as that town is concerned,  _ you _ are their lord!”

He turned to her, an incredulous smile growing on his face. “A fire in town is  _ my _ problem because I happen to live in the nearest castle?”

“Yes!”

Rumple wrinkled his nose. “I don’t think so.”

“You go off to see kings all the time. The social contract between the nobility and the peasantry isn’t new to you.”

He snorted.  _ “The social contract?  _ The peasants toil and starve while the royalty dance and feast. Any ideas of a social contract is just nonsense  _ your _ lot throws around should one of you happen to have a conscience.”

Belle gathered her skirts and sat down on the wheel table. She liked that position for a conversation because it blocked his access to the drive wheel, but just to be safe, she plucked the wool from his fingers. “I know you must have spent at least a little bit of your life in a village under the protection of a noble. Tell me what you remember about them.”

Rumple grinned. Belle had the sinking suspicion she was about to be disabused of any notions of the caring condescension of the Frontlands nobility. “Long ago,” he began, clearly enjoying himself, “I was a weaver. I raised sheep, I spun their wool, I wove it into cloth.” His lips pursed and he cocked his head for a moment, as if appraising his past. “It’s not a bad life. I held no  _ lofty aspirations!  _ But”—and here he wagged his finger—“in the distance, the sky was red. Now, why do you suppose that was?”

“The Ogre War.”

Rumple nodded. “So it was. Now, was the Duke protecting we peasants from the ogres or was he throwing us to the front to get killed?”

Belle bit her lip. “Rumple, that’s not… That’s not really fair. Human armies are no match for ogres. There’s nothing he could have done.”

Rumple cried,  _ “Nothing?” _ and gestured to himself with flailing, animated hands. “You call the Dark One  _ nothing?” _

“I don’t understand. I thought this story took place before you were the Dark One.”

“It does. But I am not the first Dark One, darling, you know that.”

Exasperated she said, “But you aren’t like other Dark Ones. You help people. That doesn’t mean the Dark One before you was going to.”

“It doesn’t matter what he wanted! He was compelled to serve the Duke. The Duke could have made him end that war as easily as I ended yours. He should have.  _ He didn’t!”  _ Despite the tale taking place centuries ago, Rumple’s anger at the memory bubbled closer to the surface with every word. “He used the power of the Dark One to force children to their deaths.”

“Wait. Rumple, what are you talking about? Compelled?”

Confusion chased his anger away. Rumple stared at her, wide-eyed. “In all your reading about sorcerers and Dark Ones, you’ve never come across the Dark One’s Dagger?”

Belle shook her head.

Rumple laughed, an uncomfortable sound. “Well,  _ this _ is awkward! I’d rather not say now.”

“What are you not telling me?”

“Haven’t you ever wondered what makes a man a Dark One?”

“Of course I’ve  _ wondered. _ Books don’t say anything about it. You know, most people don’t even know it’s a curse. I don’t know how you were cursed.”

He cleared his throat. “It’s all very straightforward. The Dark One’s Dagger bears the Dark One’s true name. He who possesses the Dagger controls the Dark One. He who  _ kills _ the Dark One with the Dagger  _ becomes _ the Dark One.”

“So this Duke,” Belle surmised, “he used the power of the Dark One to harm his people instead of help them.”

“That he did.”

“Until you took on the curse and ended the war.”

“That I did.”

Her mind reeled, trying to process all the implications of this tale. “If books don’t have information about the Dagger, how did you know about all this?”

“He told me.”

“The previous Dark One? He told you to  _ kill _ him?”

Rumple stared silently into the distance for a moment. “Sweetheart, when your life is not your own, immortality becomes a terrible burden. I was desperate to save Bae from that war. I’d have done anything. He saw that in me. He knew I would set him free.”

Something about his tone sounded like he knew that suffering intimately. Belle had long known something evil had burrowed itself into Rumple’s soul, but she had never suspected that maybe that evil wasn’t inside of him, that maybe there was another person she had never seen that directed it. “Are  _ you _ being controlled?”

“No.” It wasn’t until after she had asked it that Belle realized if Rumple were being controlled, whoever held him in thrall could have commanded him to never admit it. Still, she believed him. “I’m not.”

“Have you ever  _ been _ controlled?”

His head swayed from side to side, as though he was debating the answer. Finally, Rumple said, “Twice. The first was a long, long time ago. The second was your friend Anna, when she stole my box.”

Given how long it took him to answer, Belle had expected he would answer in the affirmative, though sweet, earnest Anna being one of the people to hold him in thrall was beyond her wildest conjectures. She couldn’t image the scars that would be left on a person after having their free will taken away. “Are you okay?”

Her concern, untimely as it was, seemed to amuse him. “I’m fine, Belle.” He shrugged. “Not so fond of Anna, but there are worst masters to be found.”

Still, the revelation that he could be compelled against his will at all was unnerving. “But no one can get it? It’s safe? No one can control you?”

“Perfectly safe.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

There was a monster sharing this man she loves. He wore the monster on the outside, hoping that by obfuscating the man, he could protect himself. But Belle could see him. She could see that he was driven by love, his love for his son and, she hoped, his love for her. The monster tried to twist him up, lead him to do unspeakable things and sometimes, it’s successful. The more she knew him, though, the more Belle became convinced the monster was not the one in charge. The man was. She had always known Rumple was good at his core. The very first thing he did with his terrible power was end a war and rescue children. She didn’t need more proof of his underlying righteousness than that.

But, just because Rumple himself did not have a rotten heart didn’t mean there weren’t people in the world that did. Were one of them to possess his Dagger, take control of his power and override the parts of him that kept the monster in check… 

Belle had never known a fear like the fear someone might enslave Rumple. She scooted across the table and leaned towards him, letting her body fall against his. Belle hugged him tight around his shoulders. Rumple let her hold him for a bit, but eventually, his tenuous hold on his own composure faltered. He patted her hair like one might pet an unfamiliar dog they feared would bite. “But, uh, you were getting on my case about something else?”

Still curled around him, Belle mumbled, “You have to help the villagers.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Helping people is what you do.”

“No, providing easy solutions at a steep price is what I do. Frankly, that you don’t see the distinction is concerning, sweetheart.”

“Fine.” She huffed against his collar. “I’ll pay. What do you want?”

Rumple reached behind him to grasp her wrists and unwind her arms from his neck. Gently, he pushed her backwards so that she was sitting up straight. “You want to make a deal?”

“If it’s the only way to get you down there, being a better lord than the one you had? Yes. What do you want from me in exchange for helping them?”

His eyes flickered away from her and back again. “This feels like a trap.”

“It’s not.” Belle folded her hands in her lap. “It’s just me wanting you to do the right thing. What do you want?”

Rumple licked his lips. “Nothing.”

With an arched eyebrow, Belle said, “You have to want  _ something.” _

He all but shouted, “I don’t!”

To communicate any clearer that he had a very specific desire and no interest in sharing it would have been impossible. Belle could hardly contain her curiosity, but if he was being skittish than to press him would not be helpful. He needed to trust her. Putting on the most encouraging smile she could (and her hand on his knee), Belle said, “Try and think of something.”

Rumple stood, rapidly and without grace. He upended his stool and it clattered on the floor. “I’m just...gonna go. See to the town. Bye.” He vanished in a plume of purple smoke.

“Hey!” Belle shouted at the air. “I said do the right thing! I didn’t say leave me behind!”

Quick as she could, Belle retrieved her cloak and hurried out of the castle. She ran down the path until she was out of breath and had to walk. Rumple’s magically propelled driver-less carriage was showy and impressive, as he generally prefered his things to be, but she couldn’t use it without him. For emergencies, they really needed to consider employing an actual human driver.

She wasn’t even halfway to town when Rumple met her on the road. “I’m already finished. You missed it.”

“You should have brought me with you!”

He inclined his head, not agreeing or apologising, but acknowledging the mistake.

“So what happened?”

Rumple offered his arm and Belle took it. They turned back towards the castle “A fire.”

She rolled her eyes. “And?”

“And a number of homes burned down. About a dozen injuries, no deaths. All easy enough to fix.”

“And you did?”

“Yes.” Rumple spun on his heels so that he faced her. “If the people down there forget I’m a monster, it is going to be your fault.” He punctuated  _ going to be your fault _ by tapping her nose with his forefinger on every word.

Belle caught his hand. “I can live with that.” He may think being seen as a monster was a good thing, but she would rather the town know their lord was a man. “Now. Are you sure you don’t want payment? I have heard it said once or twice that all magic comes with a price.”

Rumple groaned. “I’m sure.”

* * *

An autopsy report no one had actually seen cited natural causes in the death of Graham Humbert. Jean regarded this claim with a healthy degree of skepticism. Like most adults in Storybrooke, the curse had provided Graham with no family. The official channels answered to Regina; no foul play was suspected. Lawfully, no one was entitled to see the full text of the autopsy. Word of mouth circulated the results around town, with most of the community accepting that Graham’s body had been sent to the state lab in Augusta.

It was all terribly convenient. 

Graham’s body had not left Storybrooke. He had not been examined by a pathologist in Augusta. And most importantly, he had not died of natural causes. 

Graham had been murdered.

Jean couldn’t guess how Regina had done it. When Graham collapsed, he had been with Emma. Somehow, without being present, in a land without magic, Regina had managed to kill him.  _ How _ wasn’t the only question raised by his death.  _ Why  _ and _ Who was next?  _ and  _ When would Regina be brought to justice?  _ were questions she asked herself again and again, too.  

Henry had a theory on why. His reaction to Graham’s death had Emma simmering with tension and worry. A product of this world, Emma fully accepted the Augusta story, the natural causes excuse. It wasn’t impossible, after all. Seemingly healthy young people with undiagnosed conditions did, in fact, die suddenly for legitimate medical reasons. Such an explanation was far easier for Emma to grasp than a remote murder performed by Snow White’s stepmother who was masquerading as a mayor in small town Maine. Try as she might, though, Emma could not get Henry to accept her version of events. “I just can’t get through to him! Graham didn’t die because of good and evil. It’s just life! Things that suck  _ happen.” _

Certified Loner Emma Swan’s walls were up so high that the sudden death of her boss did not rate stronger language than  _ suck.  _ Certified Non-Believer Emma Swan had the luxury of not wondering how many others would be killed before Regina’s reign ended.

If Henry were correct—and his track record suggested he was—then anyone Regina suspected of remembering who they really were was in danger. As long as Emma couldn’t see the world beyond what she was brought up to expect, the only person capable of stopping Regina had accepted an unseen and non-existent pathologist’s report without question.

The situation was only growing more dire. Gold had written his own awakening into the curse before it was cast, and Jean’s as well, but Graham had been a wild card. It was a revelation to know that people could wake up without the curse itself breaking. And now, Regina knew it, too. That meant her ever weakening hold on the town could not be denied. Jean didn’t care for the idea of a desperate Regina. The desperate were dangerous and unpredictable.

What they needed, now more than ever, was a means to fight without revealing a hint of who they were or what they knew.

So Jean was less than pleased the day Gold appeared at her office smelling like he had just come from a paddock. Any hint of a dalliance between them was suspicious enough on its own. They had already come too close to being caught. If he was going to come see Jean stinking of sheep, he might as well tell Regina that he prefered to be called Rumplestiltskin.

“Why do you smell like sheep?  _ How _ do you smell like sheep?” Storybrooke was a coastal town with a floundering fishing industry. Many of their neighbors perpetually smelled like fish. Sheep and shepherds, however, were in short supply.

Gold appeared to like his smell. “Memorable, isn’t it?”

Too pleased with himself, he settled into the chair opposite her desk. Jean usually didn’t welcome physical distance between them—they had had more than enough of that. But that smell was something else. He could stay as far away as he liked. In fact, she almost wished he had used the repulsive power of livestock during their days in the Dark Castle. Resisting her desire for Rumple for months on end would have been much easier if he had been kind enough to ensure he stank.

“Not in a good way. What are you going to say if Regina catches you like this?”

“We don’t need to worry about our dear mayor at the moment. She’s in the hospital.”

_ “What?”  _ Had Emma’s eyes been opened? And what did it really mean if they had? The product of True Love breaking the curse should be gentle.

“You didn’t hear? There was a fire at town hall. Miss Swan heroically rescued Regina from the flames.” His fingers danced along the top of his cane. “She went to the hospital for smoke inhalation, but I doubt it will come to much.”

Relief warred with disappointment. Jean was glad Emma hadn’t decided she’d had enough and punched Regina, but a fire at town hall wasn’t going to bring them closer to the curse breaking. “I wonder what happened.”

“What comes next is rather more important,” Gold replied. “The power balance in this town is about to shift in Miss Swan’s direction.”

“What makes you say that?”

“The office of the sheriff, of course.”

_ “If _ Emma becomes sheriff.”

“I believe you will find the people more ready to rally behind Miss Swan than you think.”

Jean sighed. “I hope so.” Between rescuing Regina from a fire and Ashley from an unwanted adoption, the narrative of Emma Swan: Hero had been pushed pretty hard. If anyone in town was qualified to be sheriff, it was her.

Before Gold slipped out, he swept close to Jean, moving in for a kiss and an embrace. She pushed him away. “You stink!”

He only laughed and went on his way without any protests. 

Long, long ago, when he was an ordinary man who raised sheep, Rumple probably always smelled like that. He and his family would have forgotten to notice it. Jean was only bothered by it now because she was accustomed to the smells of modern America. In the Dark Castle, where his scales and claws and stained teeth and strange eyes had not been off-putting, the odor of livestock probably wouldn’t have kept Belle at arm’s length, either. To resist him was really a hopeless endeavor. 

* * *

According to the town charter, the mayor had the right to appoint a candidate for sheriff. It turned out Regina’s selection was Sidney Glass, journalist and editor, and it turned out Sidney Glass had supporters.

It was not too surprising. Emma’s arrival in town had pushed the people out of some of the inertia of the past twenty-eight years, but it was inconceivable to think everyone would stop being afraid of Regina all at once. Gold believed the people would rally behind Emma, but perhaps he had underestimated the power of a populace made obedient through fear.

David Nolan, at least, had enough sense to be embarrassed to be caught supporting Sidney. Glass had absolutely no law enforcement experience. In his candid moments, even he himself seemed to find his candidacy nonsensical. He was a journalist.

A debate between the candidates had been scheduled immediately preceding the election. Jean and Mary Margaret were papering town hall with Emma Swan posters when they ran into David doing the same for Sidney.

“My wife is friends with Regina, so…” was all David really had to say on the subject.

Mary Margaret was equally discomposed by the unexpected encounter and unpleasant reminder. With transparently fake cheer, she asked, “How is Kathryn?”

“Good. She’s meeting me here later.” 

“That’s wonderful. I’m out of posters. I’m going to get some more.” Mary Margaret hurried away.

Some sort of female solidarity would probably have been welcomed after such a confrontation, but instead of running after Mary Margaret, Jean turned to David. It was the first time she had come face to face with Prince Charming since the Enchanted Forest. “So.”

David didn’t recognize her. He said, “Hi. You’re Mary Margaret and Emma’s friend, right?”

“I am,” Jean answered. “And also a concerned citizen. Why do you believe Sidney Glass is a good candidate for sheriff?”

He held up his hands in surrender, one clutching a stapler, the other a roll of fliers. “Look, I’m just trying to support my wife.” 

His  _ wife _ just ran away humiliated. Jean pressed her lips together. “This election isn’t about your relationship. The entire town depends on the sheriff. We all have to support the most qualified candidate.”

David’s lips quirked. “You aren’t married, are you?”

“No.”

“Then you wouldn’t understand.”

The Prince Charming Jean remembered was a man of unshakable convictions, who did what was right no matter how difficult or uncomfortable it was. He was a true hero and he had earned not only Belle’s respect, but Rumple’s, too. Jean didn’t know what she liked less about David Nolan: the condescension or how easily he let himself be led astray. Relationships were built on compromise, not enabling your partner’s bad choices. She didn’t have to wear a ring to know that.

“I understand that Storybrooke deserves a sheriff who has experience in law enforcement.”

His voice low, David said, “Emma has a criminal record.”

“And so should Sidney! Emma’s record was sealed! Printing it in the paper was illegal.”

“Look.” David took a step back. “I’m just trying to hang up some posters. Let’s leave the debate to the candidates.”

David’s enthusiasm for the candidates debating seemed to be shared by the entire town. The auditorium was packed. Regina was up front with Henry. Scanning the crowd, Jean couldn’t find Mary Margaret or Gold. There were too many bodies. She couldn’t even find a seat and accepted that she would be standing in the back just in time to hear Dr. Hopper open the floor to the candidates. 

“Tragedy has brought us here,” Dr. Hopper said, “but we are faced with this decision. And now, we ask only that you listen with an open mind and to please vote your conscience. So, without further ado, I’d like to introduce you to the candidates–-Sidney Glass and Emma Swan. Glass. Swan. Sounds like something that a decorator would make you buy.” No one laughed. “Wow, crickets. Okay. Mr. Glass—your opening statement.” 

Sidney walked up to the podium. He looked to the front row and spoke with slow deliberation. “I just want to say, that if elected, I want to serve as a reflection of the best qualities of Storybrooke. Honesty, neighborliness, and strength. Thank you.”

And then it was Emma’s turn. “You guys all know I have what they call a troubled past. But, you’ve been able to overlook it because of the hero thing. But here’s the thing—the fire was a setup. Mr. Gold agreed to support me in this race, but I didn’t know that that meant he was going to set a fire. I don’t have definitive evidence, but I’m sure. And the worst part of all this was—the worst part of all this is—I let you all think it was real. And I can’t win that way. I’m sorry.”

Jean had not been able to find him in the crowd before, but now Gold stood. He shuffled awkwardly from his seat and strode out of the auditorium, the silent retreat all the self-incrimination anyone needed.

As he passed Jean, he caught her eye and winked.

The people of Storybrooke were afraid of Regina. They spent their lives catering to her whims. Hours later, when the results of the election were announced, the new sheriff was Emma Swan. Not because she saved Ashley or pulled the mayor out of a fire. But because she had shown the people she did not fear monsters.

And as far as the people in town were concerned, the monster was Mr. Gold. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was beta'd by Darthmelyanna and FeliceB. Ramurphy2005 is the person that pointed out to me that an autopsy would be done in Augusta. I had originally written Bangor.

**Author's Note:**

> Beta-ing services provided by your friendly neighborhood Darthmelyanna.
> 
> I wanted Belle's cursed name to be on the nose, but to make things easy, she was named after the writer of one of the most famous versions of "Beauty and the Beast," Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont; the director of the 1946 French film, Jean Cocteau; and the voice of Belle in the 1991 Disney film, Paige O'Hara.


End file.
